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THE DOLL BOOK 




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Spanish doll with sailor costume. This is typical of the 
dolls that Spain makes "for export" 



THE DOLL BOOK 



BY 



LAURA B. STARR 



ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR 
MANY HALF-TONES FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 




NEW YORK 

THE OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY 

MCMVHI 



Copyright, 1908, by 
THE OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY 



All Rights Reserved 



0^ 



.\ 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 

Two Copies Received 

DEC 17 1908 

~ Copy riant £ntry 
CLAifls CU XXc, , No, 
COPY a. 



77ie cofor reproductions in this booh were 
executed by the Japanese artist, Kako Morita 



Wo 

MR. STEWART CULIN 

IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF HIS KINDLY 

ADVICE AND HAPPY SUGGESTIONS IN 

THE COMPILATION OF 

THIS BOOK 



FOREWORD 

To all those who are interested in dolls, from 
the children who play with them to the students 
of their ethnological and educational aspects, I 
dedicate this story of the doll. 

I take this opportunity of acknowledging my 
indebtedness to those who have contributed to my 
store of information, among whom are several 
authors unknown to me, as I found many unsigned 
paragraphs on the subject in magazines and news- 
papers. I am also grateful to the many friends 
who have brought and sent me dolls and puppets 
from all parts of the earth. 

Especially are my thanks due to Mrs. John 
Cooper, of Shanghai, who from the first shared 
my enthusiasm and who has made my collection 
unique by her contribution of old and valuable 
Chinese and Japanese dolls. 

My collection owes its origin to the following 
incident: In Yokohama, while shopping with a 
friend, I saw a number of Japanese manikins. I 
admired them so much that one of them was put 
into my Christmas stocking, making the nucleus 

vii 



FOREWORD 

around which I have gathered several hundred 
character dolls. 

During a six years' tour around the world, I 
had time and opportunity to study doll-lore in 
many countries. I found that the love of the doll 
is common to children of every land, and that 
many legends and folk-tales in which the doll 
figures, bear a striking resemblance to each other, 
though they may come from widely diverse parts 
of the earth — facts from which it is but natural 
to conclude that dolls are among the most potent 
factors in the civilization of the world. 

The study of the doll has given me great pleas- 
ure, which I trust will be shared by my readers. 
Of these, the children will delight in the pictures 
of many forms of their beloved playthings; while 
the older readers may find food for thought in the 
ethnological, historic, and sociological aspect which 
the subject presents. 



LAURA B. STARR 

Pen and Brush Club 

New York 



Vlll 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I Antiquity op the Doll 3 

II Etymology of the Doll . . . . .13 

III Some Historic Dolls and Others . . .19 

IV Puppets and Marionettes . . . . .31 
V Fashion Dolls ....... 45 

VI Oriental Dolls . . . . . . .51 

VII Japanese Dolls ....... 68 

VIII Dolls Possessed of Supernatural Powers . 78 

IX Some Remarkable Collections . . . .88 

X Dolls of the Nativity ..... 106 

XI My Collection . . . . . . .115 

XII My Collection (Continued). . . . .123 

XIII My Collection (Continued). . . . .128 

XIV My Collection (Continued) . . . . .145 
XV Fetish Dolls 155 

XVI The Manufacture of Dolls . . . .163 

XVII Doll Curiosities . . . . . .175 

XVIII Curious Customs and Tales of Dolls . .183 

XIX North American Indian Dolls. . . . 193 

ix 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 

XX Home-made Dolls 

XXI Home-made Dolls (Continued) 

XXII Home-made Dolls (Continued) 

XXIII Home-made Dolls (Continued) 

XXIV Home-made Dolls (Continued) 

XXV The Educational Value of the Doll 



PAGE 

198 
203 
209 
216 
223 
230 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Spanish Doll with Sailor Costume .... Frontispiece 



FACING 
PAGE 



Old Egyptian Dolls, 1100 B.c 6 

Congo Iron Dolls . . . . . . . . .10 

Zuni Indian Bead Doll . . . . ' . . . .10 

Dolls from Madeira .10 

Eskimo Dolls 10 

Hindu Dolls 20 

Dolls in Deerfield Memorial Hall 28 

Cedar Bark Dolls from Vancouver Island . . . . .36 

Russian Court Costumes .40 

East Indian King and Queen . . . . . . .46 

Chinese Antique and Tilt-up Doll 52 

Chinese Marionettes ......... 56 

A Manchu General and His Wife 60* 

Mikado and Wife 66 

Chinese Baby 70 

Japanese Baby .......... 70 

Japanese Doll with Five Wigs . . . . . . .76/ 

The Blessed Bambino 80 

Swiss Dolls and a Persian . . . . . . . .88' 

Siberian Dolls, from Baron Kroff's Bay 94 

Dutch, Maarken and North Holland Dolls . . . . .100 
Miss Maude Brewer's Collection of Antique Dolls .... 104 

Persian Doll 116 

Parsee Dancing Girl . . . . . . . . .116 

Lebanon Doll 120 

Spanish Doll from Salonica 124 

Lace-maker from Le Puy, France ...... 130 

XI 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING 
PAGE 



Figure from Nativity Scene, Rome . . . . . . 130 

Danish, Swedish, and Two Norwegian Costumes; Hardanger Bride, 

Norway 136 

New Haven Fish-wife, Two Black Forest and Two Nicaraguan Dolls . 136 
Cowboy, Uncle Sam, and Goddess of Liberty .... 140 

Lake George Papoose and Labrador Dolls ..... 144 
San Carlos Doll and Cradle-board, Soudanese Doll . . . 144 

Kaugnawauga Indian on Snowshoes ...... 150 

Indian Woman 150 

Seminole Indian Dolls ......... 150 

Florentine Misericordia ........ 156 

Mexican Runner . . . . . . . . . . 156 

Zuni Indian God Doll 160 

Irish Boy of Seventeenth Century, Irish Woman and Colleen . . 164 
Alaska, Corn Husk and French Rag Doll ..... 172 

Italian Nurse and Baby, Vienna Baby, and Brazilian Nurse and Baby 172 
Welsh, Highlander and Canary Island Dolls ..... 184 

A Pair from the Austrian Tyrol ....... 188 

Indian Dolls in Canoe ........ 194 

Indian Doll in Toboggan ........ 194 

A Young Arab of Quality and a Donkey Boy .... 200 

Spanish Toreador, Basque Country Dolls, and Black Virgin of Lyons, 

France 200 

String Doll 208 ' 

Shoshone and Cheyenne Indian Dolls 208 

Roumanian Princess (Fifteenth Century) 214 - 

Roumanian Peasant . . . . . . 214 

Roumanian Woman from Brest, France 214 

Cannes and Aries Dolls 220 

Colonial Quilting Bee 226 

Pilgrim Dolls .232 



Xll 



THE DOLL BOOK 



THE DOLL BOOK 

CHAPTER I 

ANTIQUITY OF THE DOLL 

WHO played with the first doll; how was 
it fashioned; when and where was it 
evolved, are questions to which history 
fails to give a satisfactory answer. 
We search the archives of the past, we unearth 
Egypt to discover the secret, we wander through 
pagan Rome, we travel to India, to the cradle of 
our civilization, as far back as documentary evi- 
dence, legend or myth will carry us, and we find 
dolls. Recorded history does not go back to the 
time when there were no dolls. 

They are found in the sanctuary of the pagan, 
in the tombs of the dead; pictured in quaint and 
sometimes awkward lines in plaster and stone, 
that have withstood the elements for thousands of 
years. 

Since time was they have been, apparently, the 
presiding deity of the hearthstone and the cradle. 
Most people would subscribe to the popular theory 

3 



THE DOLL BOOK 

that the mother impulse is so strong in every child 
that she must have some object upon which to 
lavish her childish affection, and that the most 
natural object is a doll built on somewhat the same 
lines as the baby brother or sister or some of the 
"grown ups" of the family. 

The gathered opinions of various early and classic 
writers point to the probability that the doll, as the 
image of a human or superhuman creature, had an 
ecclesiastical origin and was used in the ceremonies 
of the religion which preceded Brahmanism. 

Later with the religion it was carried to China 
and Egypt and from thence made its way to all the 
other countries of the globe. So much for theory. 

That dolls were common in the time of Moses 
is certain, for we read that in those sarcophagi, 
which are frequently exhumed in Egypt, there have 
been found beside the poor little baby mummies 
pathetically comical little imitations of themselves 
placed there by loving mothers, within reach of 
the cold little baby fingers. 

In "Ave Roma Immortalis," Marion Crawford 
speaks of children's dolls of centuries ago, "made 
of rags and stuffed with the waste from their 
mothers' spindles and looms." He also tells of 
effigies of bullrushes, which the pontiffs and ves- 
tals came to throw into the Tiber from the Sub- 
lician bridge on the Ides of May. 

4 



ANTIQUITY OF THE DOLL 

In the museums at Naples and Rome there are 
numbers of terra-cotja dolls that were found in 
the ruins of Pompeii; pathetic little remains of 
happy childhood. 

When Herculaneum was being excavated, there 
was found the figure of a little girl with a doll 
clasped tightly in her arms, — not even death could 
divide the two. 

The presence of dolls in the graves of children 
is accounted for by the fact that it was an ancient 
custom to bury a child's toys with it in the expecta- 
tion that the spirit forms of the inanimate things 
would rise with the child and amuse it in the spirit 
world as they had done in this. 

Early writers tell us that a custom among the 
pagans required children to make votive offerings of 
their toys and playthings to the gods in the temples, 
when they had reached a certain age. This custom 
still obtains in certain parts of the Orient. 

The oldest dolls in the world are in the British 
Museum. They were found in the tombs of 
Egyptian children and some among them are more 
than 4,000 years old. 

Queer little manikins they are but they com- 
mand immense respect as being the veritable doll- 
babies which the little brown-skinned children of 
Pharaoh's land loved and cuddled and put to 
sleep centuries before the Christ child was born. 

5 



THE DOLL BOOK 

The collection is labeled "Early Egyptian Dolls," 
with dates ranging from 1,000 to 4,400 years b. c. 
There is a great variety of them, as to material, 
form and decorations. Clothes evidently were 
thought superfluous or the material of which they 
were made has vanished, for there, is nothing that 
might even by a vivid imagination be thought to 
represent clothing. These small images are made 
of ivory, clay, wood and bronze. 

The dolls in one group have curious heads of 
clay to which strings of colored beads have been 
attached either to represent hair or perhaps the 
face veil, which is still worn by many Eastern 
women, though in these days the beads are inter- 
spersed with coin which represents the woman's 
dower or fortune. They have neither feet nor legs 
which peculiarity is probably accounted for by the 
fact that at that time the extremities of babies 
were swathed about with yards of cloth and it was 
thought hardly worth while to carve feet and legs 
that would never be in evidence. The long flat 
body of one of this group is marked off in squares 
like a checkerboard, possibly having been used 
for a game of some sort. This particular group 
dates from 1000 b. c. 

In another group there is one which somewhat 
resembles our modern dolls, it being fairly well 
shaped down to the knees. The arms are gro- 

6 



ANTIQUITY OF THE DOLL 

tesquely long like the elongated ones of Japanese 
monkeys. The body is crudely carved of wood 
to represent a Nubian woman, and the doll was 
without doubt the beloved toy of an Egyptian 
child a century or more before Christ was born. 

Another group consists of a terra-cotta man 
with a duck's head ; an oriental Queen gorgeously 
dressed in a gilded crown only — the figure is made 
of bronze and has jointed arms and legs. Another 
figure in the group has a tiny babe in her arms. 

In a museum in Berlin there is a wooden Egyp- 
tian doll with movable joints which is probably of 
the same period as the collection in the British Mu- 
seum. There is also a fine collection of early 
Egyptian dolls in the Louvre, Paris, and another 
in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. 

According to Wilkinson, the children of the 
ancient Egyptians amused themselves with painted 
dolls whose hands and legs, moving on pins, were 
made to assume various positions by means of 
strings, like the modern puppets. Many of these 
were very crudely formed, without legs or with 
an imperfect representation of a single arm or leg 
on one side. Some had strings of beads hanging 
from the doubtful place of the head and others 
wore curious imitations of wigs. 

A few exhibited a nearer approach to the human 
figure and some made with considerable attention 

7 



THE DOLL BOOK 

to proportion were small models of the children 
themselves. They were colored in the most absurd 
manner; the more shapeless had usually the most 
gaudy appearance as being thought most likely to 
catch the eye of the infant. The show of reality 
was deemed more suited to the taste of an older 
child, and the nearer their resemblance to human 
objects the less they partook of artificial ornament. 

Sometimes the doll was only part of a toy; for 
instance, a man washing clothes or kneading dough 
would be represented by a doll, the necessary 
movements indicative of his employment being 
imitated by the pulling of strings. Groups of 
soldiers were made to march in the same fashion. 
A crocodile doll that opened and shut its mouth 
with great realism was a favorite with most children 
in those days. 

In Notes and Queries of April 21, 1906, there was 
the following query from an English gentleman : 

"I have read somewhere, I cannot tell where, 
that children of the Comoro Islands use headless 
dolls, the reproduction of human features being 
forbidden by Mohammedan religion. Can any 
one kindly confirm or deny the above?" 

In answer to the above nothing can be more 
conclusive than the following notes by Gustave 
Schlegel of the University of Leyden: 

" Among the ancient Egyptians we find children's 

8 



ANTIQUITY OF THE DOLL 

games developed in exactly the same way as to-day 
among our children. To them were known the 
running games, ball tossing and the doll. We 
have found wooden dolls that were not inferior to 
ours, and which were certainly dressed by the 
little Egyptian maid as to-day our girls dress 
their little manikins. 

"There were also movable dolls, whose hands 
and feet could be pulled with strings; others there 
were made of painted wood which showed only 
indicationally the human form and had strings of 
pearls instead of hair. 

"The children of the old world were supplied 
with dolls, although the plainer mode of dressing 
at that time furnished the little ladies less occupa- 
tion than do our fashionable dolls of to-day. 
There are in the museums rude and rough dolls of 
wood and clay beside finer ones of wax and ivory. 

"In the Vatican Museum, among the Roman 
remains found in the catacombs, are found ivory 
dolls with movable limbs. When we see the dolls 
thus spread every where amongst the children of past 
ages, the conclusion may seem reasonable that the 
dolls with which all children of cultivated European 
nations play, may be considered a direct offering 
from them. 

"The doll is the first and most natural toy of the 
child, the girls especially, who in impulse of imita- 

9 



THE DOLL BOOK 

tion, playing mother, converts any handy, suitable 
object to a doll. So effectual is this, the laws of 
Islam suffer therefrom. 

"The Koran forbids bodily representation, but 
the Mohammedan child for that reason does not 
lose its doll. Aischa, the prophet Mohammed's 
nine-year-old wife, romped around with her doll in 
his harem, and the holy man himself was accus- 
tomed to play with them. 

"A good authority on the Orient informs us that 
the Mohammedan woman in Bagdad sees a specter 
in every doll which might unexpectedly become 
active and do harm to her children. Dolls are 
therefore not given to the children as toys — but 
the little girls obeying the voice of Nature, nurse 
and play with pieces of wood and pillows instead 
of with the manufactured toys." 

It would be wearying should I here mass the 
evidence and show how everywhere the doll is at 
home; a few illustrations will suffice: 

With the children of the Arctic races, the doll 
plays an important part. It is present with all 
Siberians as a little fur monstrosity, and Wirdenskiol 
praises the good work of the dolls among the 
Tscuktchen. The Alaskan dolls are similar and 
made by women; the dress and exterior in imita- 
tion of adults. This applies to Indians. 

Adrien Jacobsen speaks of "numerous dolls 

10 







1. Congo iron dolls 2. Zuni Indian bead doll 3. Dolls from the 
Madeira Islands 4. Eskimo dolls, carved from walrus tusks 



ANTIQUITY OF THE DOLL 

among the Eskimos, cut out of bones and mammoth 
teeth and dressed in furs. All the Northern peo- 
ple have dolls for their children as far as East 
Greenland and there they are found in the graves 
of extinct races. 

"As with us it happens that we lay into the 
coffin the doll of a beloved child, so have Reiss and 
Slubel designated as dolls small originally dressed 
clay figures in old Peruvian graves. Dolls worked 
out of clay are also found amongst the Sakalaven 
of Madagascar." 

Catlin tells us that "Indian mothers fill the 
cradle of the dead child with feathers arranged in 
the form of the child, and carry this substitute 
about with them; speak with it and treat it as a 
child. 

"The O jib ways on the northern sea call these 
dolls Kitemagissiwin, which means unlucky doll, 
because through them the dead one is represented. 
Kohl says that the long fast-tied-together pack- 
ages of the hair of the dead child contain its toys, 
clothes and amulets. This doll everywhere takes 
the place of the dead child; the sorrowing mother 
carries it around with her for a year; sets it in the 
wooden cradle at her side by the fire, and takes it 
with her on long journeys. 

"The idea which is fixed in her mind is that 
the deceased child is still too small to find its way 

11 



THE DOLL BOOK 

to Paradise, but through the persistent carrying of 
the substituted imitation the mother believes her- 
self to help the soul along. Therefore she carries 
it until she fancies the soul of the little loved one 
has grown enough to find its own way. 

" In Africa we find a similar custom. The Fingo 
doll plays in the Orange Free State an important 
role with the natives. Every Fingo maid receives 
upon maturity a doll which she retains until she 
becomes a mother. Then her mother gives her a 
new doll which she carefully conserves until she 
has a second child, and so forth. These dolls are 
held as sacred and the owner never voluntarily 
parts with them. Casalis reports a similar custom 
among the Basutos." 



12 



CHAPTER II 

ETYMOLOGY OF THE DOLL 

THE word doll was not found in common 
use in our language until the middle of 
the eighteenth century. Its first appear- 
ance so far as I can discover, was accord- 
ing to an English writer in the B. E. Dictionary, in 
1700. Later it was found in the Gentleman's 
Magazine for September, 1751, where it is recorded 
that several dolls with different dresses, made in 
St. James Street, have been sent to the Czarina to 
show the manner of dressing at present in fashion 
among English ladies. 

M. d'Allemange, in his "Historie des Jouets," 
tells us that long before Caesar astonished the 
world with his victories, Roman children played 
with dolls which had the jointed bodies and the 
classic heads we are wont to see on the statues in 
the museums and which look very queer to the 
child of the twentieth century; but they only show 
that then, as now, the doll was the expression of 
the people. 

13 



THE DOLL BOOK 

An ancient writer declares that doll is a corrup- 
tion of dole, Saxon dol — a share distributed — and 
cites as evidence of the truth of his statement the 
fact that a lady of Duxfurd left a sum of money 
to be given away annually in the parish — to be 
called Doll-money; but the writer is mistaken; it 
is dole-money. 

An ecclesiastical writer says that the origin of the 
doll and its name may be more than guessed at 
from the sermons of Roger Edgeworth, one of the 
first three prebendaries of the outrages of the 
Reformation. He says that the images were taken 
from the churches and given to the children as 
pretty idols or dolls, but this statement has been 
successfully controverted. 

A writer in Notes and Queries says that nearly a 
thousand years ago the old name for maid-servant 
was "doul," which used also to mean "a doll," 
"danice," "duckie," and he thinks doll may be a 
corruption of this word. Dryden translates pupae 
in "Perseus' ' into baby-toys and in a note says that 
those baby-toys were little babies or "puppets," 
whence says Richardson, it seems that the name 
of doll was not in general use at that time. An- 
other writer in a vague way says: "Centuries ago 
when saint's names were much in vogue for chil- 
dren, St. Dorothea was the most popular and her 
name the best and luckiest that could be given to 

14 



ETYMOLOGY OF THE DOLL 

a little girl. The nickname was Dolly or Doll, 
and from giving babies the nickname, it was an 
easy step to pass it on to the little images of which 
they were so fond." 

The following is the French version of the origin 
of the word poupee, the common name for doll. 
Pursellb Grivaldi, a clever Italian, conceived the 
idea, or perhaps carried out one he had received 
from the Orient, of making wax figures and dress- 
ing them in the costumes of emperors, empresses 
and other famous folk. 

He arranged sixty or seventy of these and carried 
them to Paris, where he advertised them as a show 
of puppets — or a puppet play. It was something 
new and all Paris flocked to see the novelty. 
Queen Isabella, consort of poor mad King Charles 
VI., saw at once that the exhibition would please 
her distraught husband, and bade the Italian 
bring the puppets to Court where they became 
very popular with the courtiers. 

Curiously enough the King took a great fancy 
to one representing Poppaea, the beautiful but 
wicked consort of Nero, and he persisted in having 
her erratic career and tragic death rehearsed to 
him until he became familiar with it and insisted 
upon keeping the wax Poppsea. 

The fad for the figures waned when Charles 
died, and the whole collection was turned over to 

15 



THE DOLL BOOK 

the children, who have since had a monopoly of 
them. 

This writer claims that the French poupee and 
the German puppe are different forms of the 
word Poppsea, but he has hardly gone far enough 
back in his researches, for the Latin word for doll 
is "pupa, a girl, damsel, a puppet or baby"; as the 
Latin dictionary puts it, "such as girls played with 
while little, and being grown gave to Venus." 

A little observation will convince any one that 
dolls appeal to a very large portion of the general 
public; if not for themselves individually, for the 
children of their family or those of others. Dolls 
are universal gifts at Christmas and that small 
girl who does not receive one is poor indeed. 

A few years ago there was published in the daily 
papers an appeal to mothers to send " ten-inch 
dolls to gladden the half -orphaned hearts" of the 
babies of New York asylums. The response was 
so generous that dolls came in a perfect avalanche, 
which one of the reporters acknowledged in the 
following verses: 

"The charge then burst open the door; 
And with mighty uproar, 
Came flushing and pushing, 
And rushing and crushing, 
And courtesying and bending, 
A train never ending. 
Some gliding, some sliding, 
Some hurrying, some scurrying, 

16 



ETYMOLOGY OF THE DOLL 

Some dancing, some jumping, 
Some thumping, some bumping; 
Dolls from the south of us, 
Dolls from the west of us, 
Dolls from the east of us, 
Swelling the throng." 

"Some dolls could talk and some could walk, 
While some were dressed as brides, 
With sable coats and Irish lace, 
And diamond rings besides. 
Some old-time plaster. paris dolls, 
And waxen dolls were there, 
And china dolls like grandma used, 
With painted china hair." 

A well-known writer who regrets the passing of 
the old-fashioned doll with the disappearance of 
the old-fashioned child, gives vent to the following : 

"A modern little girl not only does not make her 
doll's clothes, but she actually puts out her wash- 
ing. She knows nothing of the delight of the doll's 
laundry day, with the drying lines stretched across 
the inside of the nursery fender, and the loan of 
the iron with which nurse gets up her caps. The 
modern little girl demands the services of a maid 
for her doll. How different the old-fashioned 
little girl. She slept with her doll. She shared 
her meals with dolly; she sat on her doll in order 
to keep her safe and have her handy, as Dickens 
describes the selfish old man at the seaside reading- 
room sitting on one popular newspaper while he 
reads another. 

17 



THE DOLL BOOK 

"The old-fashioned little girl and her gutta- 
percha doll were full of fun and — flexible, 'b-r-r-r- 
rumpety dumpety dump dump dump.' 

"The doll of the modern little girl makes me 
heartsick. She looks at you with such shy blue 
eyes, eyes with sweeping lashes distractingly real, 
and such genuine hair. It has Marcel waves. 
And the face is so intellectual, so different from 
the happy expression of the good old gutta-percha 
doll. And yet dolls and soldiers and other things 
about a room may bring very sad memories." 



18 



CHAPTER III 

SOME HISTORIC DOLLS AND OTHERS 

OLD dolls are among the things that are 
taking on new values in this day and 
generation. Battered and bruised al- 
most beyond recognition, various dolls 
that were once fondled affectionately, loved beyond 
their deserts, have been brought from that limbo 
to which are relegated forgotten and disused things 
and restored to as much of their pristine beauty 
as possible. 

They are respected and revered for their great 
age like women who have reached that period of 
life when they prefer to add a few years to their 
age rather than to subtract them as they did when 
younger. 

That queens were not above playing with dolls, 
even when they were quite grown, we have abun- 
dant evidence. 

"Mary Stuart brought with her to Scotland from 
Paris lovely French dolls, which she set apart for 
ornament rather than use, but her chief delight 
was in the dolls she and her Marys had made and 

19 



THE DOLL BOOK 

dressed." The beautiful queen was devoted to 
her family of dolls, not only during her childhood 
in France, but later, when she went, a young and 
lovely widow, to Scotland. She is reported to have 
spent much time with her dolls, perhaps to distract 
her mind from the machinations of her nobles who 
wished to rule Scotland in her stead. When she 
had leisure she would gather her Marys together 
and set them to work with her making rag dolls, 
and little beds and bedding fashioned like her own. 
Queen Mary took upon herself the making of the 
small sheets and bolster covers for the beds, and 
while they sewed they would discourse lovingly of 
France and the pleasant life they had left behind 
them. 

Queen Elizabeth had a great passion for dolls in 
her youth, and among the collection she left was a very 
curious specimen of the doll-maker's art, composed 
entirely of the bark of trees, so artistically pieced 
together that only a close inspection revealed the 
fact that the whole was not carved out of one solid 
piece of mahogany. This doll, which was reputed 
to have been in existence more than two centuries 
previous to coming into the young princess' nurs- 
ery, was clothed in such a variety of beautiful gar- 
ments that her juvenile highness always had the 
assistance of a maid to dress and undress her 
favorite plaything. 

20 




6D 

a 

i 



HISTORIC DOLLS AND OTHERS 

Another strange doll with which the Queen's 
childhood was associated was one from Spain. It 
was almost life-size, and dressed in clothes said to 
have been made by the highest ladies of the land, 
although, as the author of " Things Quaint and 
Curious" remarks, "the stitching of the various 
garments was not above reproach, a blemish, how- 
ever, which was fully recompensed by the magnifi- 
cence of the cloth used." 

A wonderland doll was possessed by the Duchess 
of Kinloch, who lived prior to the Reformation. 
It was made of the wood of the fir tree, and so 
ingeniously constructed that by the mere pressing jV" 
of either of its eyes it would open its mouth, yawn, 
laugh, and make an expression as if in pain. Not 
only would it do all this, but it could be made to 
move its legs, as if walking at a rapid rate. The 
hair used was human, and once adorned the head 
of a wealthy and titled lady, who lost her life for 
the sake of her religion. 

French as well as English queens were fond of 
dolls, even after they had grown up. In the year 
1493, Anna of Brittany sent to Queen Isabella of 
Castile, who was forty-three years old, a large 
poupee, probably for the purpose of showing her 
the fine fashions that were in vogue at the Court 
of France. 

The record of some extremely costly dolls that 

21 



THE DOLL BOOK 

were manufactured in the seventeenth century has 
come down to us intact. Louis d'Epernon, who 
gave up a bishopric in order to become a soldier, 
spent several hundred dollars on a doll for little 
Mile, de Bourbon, who later acquired distinction 
as the Duchesse de Longueville. We have a full 
description of this costly doll, and it is gratifying 
to learn that the kind-hearted giver obtained for his 
money, in addition to the doll, a complete sleeping 
apartment for the little lady, in which were a bed, 
furniture, several handsome gowns and all neces- 
sary underwear. One wonders whether the Duch- 
ess of Orleans fared as well as this when in 1722, 
she gave several thousand dollars for a superb 
doll, which she presented to the little Queen. 

In the art of manufacturing and dressing dolls, 
the French excelled at that time, and more than 
one chronicler assures us that they were accus- 
tomed to send several of their handsomest and best 
dressed dolls to foreign countries in order that the 
people there might clearly see the superiority of 
French fashions. 

According to the newspapers, the oldest doll in 
America lives in Montgomery County, Maryland. 

She was brought to this country by William 
Penn, in 1699. His daughter, Letitia, selected the 
doll as a gift for a little Miss Rankin of Philadel- 
phia. The children of the Quakers of those days 

22 



HISTORIC DOLLS AND OTHERS 

took good care of their playthings, and although 
the doll was the cherished companion of several 
generations of little Quakeresses, she is still in 
good condition, wearing the grand court dress in 
which she came to this country. 

Polly Sumner is another doll to be admired and 
respected for her great age; she was born in Eng- 
land and came to this country in 1773, and has 
nearly a century and a quarter to her credit. She 
was placed for sale in a Boston shop and was 
bought by pretty Polly Sumner who was then a 
bride. She was splendidly arrayed in an English 
court dress of the period, and wore a gown of rich 
brocade over a large hoop, had pearl beads around 
her neck and on her head was set a jaunty cap 
with curling ostrich feathers. She is made of good 
English oak, is still sound in every joint and likely 
to last for a long time. 

After having been lost to sight for a generation 
or two, she was brought out and dressed in Quaker 
garb, and later found a place in the old Church 
Museum. She is now owned by Mrs. Mary 
Langley, who prizes her very highly. 

Another old doll is the property of Mrs. Otis H. 
Brown of 86 Oak Street, South Weymouth, Mass. 
She bears the name of Mehitable Hodges, and is 
known to be 184 years old. She was brought 
from France to Salem in 1724, by Captain Gamaliel 

23 



THE DOLL BOOK 

Hodges, for his little daughter. Mrs. Brown is a 
descendant of Captain Hodges and inherited the 
doll. 

The doll is arrayed in her original costume of 
pink silk, fashioned after the style of Louis XIV., 
and is perfect in every detail, the silk even retaining 
its color after a lapse of nearly two centuries. 

Mehitable Hodges has traveled a good deal and 
has been on exhibition and taken first prize at doll 
shows, besides many church fairs and charity 
exhibits in New England. This doll was exhibited 
to the public for the last time at a recent doll show 
in South Weymouth, and is now safely cased and 
blanketed and shown only to visitors at the home 
of Mr. and Mrs. Brown. 

During the war between the North and South, 
in the United States, many a precious article was 
conveyed through the lines inside a doll's body. 
Not even the soldier on guard had the heart to 
deprive a child of its most valued and apparently 
harmless toy, by confiscating a doll, but presently 
the trick was discovered and no more dolls were 
allowed to pass through the lines. Quinine, mor- 
phine and other drugs as well as war dispatches 
were conveyed in this manner and the families to 
whom these dolls were sent treasured them beyond 
belief. A Mississippi family has a small colony 
of dolls which brought cotton seed from Mexico 

24 



HISTORIC DOLLS AND OTHERS 

at that time, and the whole Natchez district is still 
growing cotton from that seed. 

Another doll not so old but one that has historic 
interest, is owned by Mrs. William Wallace of 
Morristown, N. J. It was once the property of 
Hannah Marcelles, to whom General Lafayette 
gave it in exchange for a kiss. It is a flat-faced 
little baby with abnormally red cheeks and a sharp 
nose. It wears a silk gown and a Napoleon hat; 
across its breast are the figures 1797. 

A doll that has a very short, though interesting 
history, is one owned by the young daughter of 
Frederick Eles of Lansdale, Pa. Its curly locks 
once grew on the head of the child's own father. 
The hair was made into a beautiful wig which can 
be put on and off, and is the envy of the girls in 
the vicinity of her home. 

A colored doll, one with an interesting history, 
is owned by the Lincoln family of Massachusetts. 
Her name is Georgia and she has more than a 
hundred years to her credit. She is beaten and 
battered almost beyond recognition, but after all 
has stood the stress of generations remarkably 
well. 

She had been packed away as a valuable heir- 
loom for forty years, when about three years ago 
she was once more brought to the front and estab- 
lished as one of the large family of dolls belonging 

25 



THE DOLL BOOK 

to the present generation. She takes the place of 
honor as her right and is really respected and 
revered by the twentieth century little ones who 
call her dear great grandmamma. 

Mrs. Carlyle's doll with its pathetic ending is 
historic surely. She tells us that when she was a 
young girl, she had a beautiful doll and was very 
fond of it and played with it until the governess 
came and made her study Latin. Then she began 
to think she was too much of a young lady to play 
with dolls, and so she decided she would have her 
doll die as Dido did on a funeral pyre. She set the 
little four-post bedstead in the garden and with 
lead pencils, sticks of cinnamon and a nutmeg 
built the pyre. After having put the doll on the 
bed she emptied a whole bottle of perfume over 
her and set fire to her. When she saw the poor 
dolly burning she was sorry and screamed and 
tried to save her, but she was too late, her dolly 
burned and she never had any other doll. 

Of course the collections of Queens Victoria and 
Wilhelmina are historic, but as they are described 
in another chapter, they need only be referred to 
here. 

In the Journal of Jean Hersard, mention is made 
of several beautiful dolls in a coach offered by 
Sully to Louis XIII. when he was a child. Louis 
XIV. played with dolls as well as soldiers. 

26 



HISTORIC DOLLS AND OTHERS 

Cardinal Richelieu gave to Madame d'Enghein 
a miniature room with six doll people in it. Miles, 
de Ramnonillel and de Banlenlle played with 
them, dressing and undressing them, feeding and 
physicking them to their heart's content. The 
room was a Louis XIII. interior; the costumes, 
head-dresses, nurse's uniform, osier cradle, were 
identical to the period. 

The three dolls sent by Felix Faure to the three 
little grand duchesses of Russia not long ago, 
will in time become objects of great historic in- 
terest. One has a phonograph inside her so ar- 
ranged as to say: "Good morning, dear mamma, 
did you sleep well?" This must have been of 
wonderful interest even to a mite of a grand 
duchess. 

Another had four costumes representing Nor- 
mandy, Arlesienne, Bearnaise and Breton peasants. 

The third was that of a debutante dressed for 
her first soiree; a second costume reproduced the 
exact dress worn by a young lady at the Trianon 
Fete last year; the third was a most fetching cos- 
tume for a yachtswoman. All were as dainty and 
expensive as real lace and jewels could make them. 
The cost of fashioning and dressing one of these 
little ladies was between six and seven hundred 
dollars, each head-dress alone costing fifty dollars. 

These fortunate dolls took with them twenty 

27 



THE DOLL BOOK 

trunks filled with Paris clothes. So important was 
the gift, a titled secretary of embassy was dele- 
gated to travel with the dolls and look after their 
belongings. 

History tells us that when Maximilian made his 
entry into Augsberg in the year 1504, the little 
four-year-old daughter of the Syndic Peutinger 
addressed the Emperor in Latin verse. Maxi- 
milian was so surprised and pleased with the 
infant prodigy that he told her he would give her 
whatever she would like most to have. The 
Emperor undoubtedly imagined she would ask 
for a new book or a jewel, perhaps. His surprise 
must have been great when the child blushed and 
said she would like to have a doll. It is needless 
to say that she was the recipient of the finest and 
most costly one that Maximilian could buy. 

In "Child Life in Colonial Days," Alice Morse 
Earle writes of various sorts of dolls that gladdened 
the hearts of Colonial children. She says: "The 
best dolls in England were originally sold at 
Bartholomew Fair and were known as 'Bartholo- 
mew Babies.'" 

In "Poor Robin's Almanack," 1695, is a refer- 
ence to a Bartholomew baby tricked up with ribbons 
and knots ; and they were known at the time of the 
landing of the Pilgrims. Therefore it is not im- 
possible that some Winthrop or Winslow maid, 

28 




Dolls in Deerfield Memorial Hall. The child has gone, but her 
doll's "remnants" remain 



HISTORIC DOLLS AND OTHERS 

some little miss of Bradford or Brewster birth, 
brought across seas a Bartholomew baby and was 
comforted by it. 

In the collection at Deerfield Memorial Hall is 
a doll so beaten and battered that it has little 
resemblance to either ancient or modern dolls. It 
is named Bangwell Putt and for nearly a century 
was the beloved companion of a blind girl, Clarissa 
Field, who lived in Northfield, Mass. At her 
death, some curious, crude attempts at versifica- 
tion were found pinned to the doll's clothing, 
which lent an unusual interest to the shapeless 
little creature. From the legend attached to the 
doll, it seems to have been as cherished a companion 
of the blind woman in her old age as in her youth. 

The descendants of John Quincy Adams treas- 
ure a shapely rag doll who spent the days of her 
youth with the children of the President in the 
White House at Washington. 

A lady in New York owns a doll of great historic 
interest; a small, wooden- jointed doll that was 
bought by one of her ancestors from Hepzibah 
Pincheon when she opened her penny-shop in the 
House of Seven Gables in Salem. "Wooden 
Milkmaids," Hawthorne called these dolls. 

A doll owned and loved by that beautiful daugh- 
ter of the Confederacy, Winnie Davis, has a place of 
honor in the Confederate Museum, Richmond, Va. 

29 



THE DOLL BOOK 

A few years ago there was still in the Falconiere 
Palace in Rome some dolls that had once belonged 
to Elisa Bonaparte. Letitia Bonaparte, mother 
of the great Napoleon, lived in this palace for 
many years. After her death, there was found 
an old wardrobe where she had kept the toys that 
had amused her children in Corsica. Among 
them were several dolls that had cheered the heart 
of Elisa, and Joseph, too, for it is somewhere 
recorded that Joseph used to take Madame Mere's 
old silk dresses to make beds for his sister's dolls. 

A celebrated historic doll is one representing the 
Duke de Berry, who was assassinated by Laurel. 
The wig is made from the Duke's own hair; the 
legend attached to it declares that the doll was once 
the cherished possession of the Comte de Cham- 
bord. 



30 



CHAPTER IV 

. PUPPETS AND MARIONETTES 

A NCIENT Greece, Rome and Egypt knew 
/jL the puppet-play with small images or 
jL. JL. puppets representing the dramatis per- 
sona. Herodotus mentions them and 
later writers frequently speak of them, but accord- 
ing to Richard Pischel, it is to India, that old won- 
derland from which we have received so many 
blessings, that we must go to find the home of the 
puppet-play and perhaps the origin of the first doll. 
In an admirable address delivered by him on 
assuming the office of rector of the Konigliche 
Vereinigte Friedrichs University, Halle Witten- 
berg said: "The birthplace of fairy tales has long 
been recognized to be India. They wandered 
from India to Persia, and thence the Arabs brought 
them to Europe. But the origin of puppet-plays 
still remains quite obscure. The problem is also 
more difficult to solve because the sources flow but 
feebly. The art of the puppet-player has always 
been more or less of a mystery, receiving no sub- 
stantial encouragement from the cultured class. 

31 



THE DOLL BOOK 

"Xenophon in his 'Symposion' makes the 
puppet-player from Syracuse assert that he 
esteems fools above other men, they being the 
spectators of his puppet plays and consequently 
the means of his livelihood. 

"This is hardly borne out by facts; the puppet- 
player, Prothernos, was so much sought after in 
Athens that the Archons gave up to him the very 
stage on which the dramas of Euripides had excited 
the enthusiasm of the populace. France in the 
time of Moliere and Beaumarchais, England under 
Shakespeare and Sheridan, Germany in the days 
of Goethe and Schiller had numerously attended 
marionette shows, which at times proved formid- 
able rivals to theatrical companies. 

"For the most part the puppet-play has been the 
favorite child of the mass of the people and only 
the step-child of the cultured classes because it 
appeals most strongly to the people to whom it 
owes its origin. 

"The words for puppet in Sanskrit are putrika, 
duhitrka, puttati, pullalika, all of which mean 
little daughter. In ancient India puppets were 
made out of wool, wood, buffalo horn, and ivory, 
and these playthings were quite as popular long 
ago with the girls of that country as they are with 
our girls of the present day. 

"A broken doll was then the cause of as many 

32 



PUPPETS AND MARIONETTES 

tears as would be shed nowadays; indeed, it was 
proverbially said of any one who had caused his 
own misfortune and then lamented over it that he 
was 'crying after breaking his own doll.' 

"In India even grown-up people enjoyed playing 
with puppets. Vatsya-yana, in his 'Treatise on 
Love' advises not only boys but also young men 
to join the girls and young women in their games 
with puppets as means of gaining their affections. 

"In the Mahabharata, Princess Uttara and her 
friends entreat Arjuna to bring back with him 
from his campaign fine, gaily colored, delicate and 
soft garments for their dolls. 

"A legend runs that Parrati, wife of Siva, made 
herself such a beautiful doll that she thought it nec- 
essary to conceal it from the eyes of her husband. 
She carried it far away to the Malaya mountain, 
but visited it every day that she might adorn it. 

"Siva, rendered suspicious by her long absence, 
stole after her, saw the doll, fell in love with it and 
gave it life. 

"There is also an early mention made of puppets 
worked by machinery. We read that Somaprabha, 
the daughter of a celebrated mechanician, brought 
as a present to her friend, Princess Kalingasena, a 
basket of mechanical wooden puppets, constructed 
by her father. 

"There was a wooden peg in each of the puppets 

33 



THE DOLL BOOK 

and when this was touched one of them flew 
through the air, fetched a wreath, and returned 
when ordered; another when desired, brought 
water in the same way; a third danced and a fourth 
carried on conversation. 

"Somadera was not born until the eleventh cen- 
tury of our era, but his work is an adaptation of 
the oldest collection of fairy tales, the Brhatkatha 
of Gunadhya. 

"Talking dolls must not, however, be considered 
a mere invention of story-tellers. Among the 
social amusements mentioned in the 'Treatise on 
Love,' there is mention made of a game called the 
mimicry of puppets. Mithila, the capital of Videka 
in eastern India, is mentioned as the place where 
this amusement is most in vogue. Talking pup- 
pets worked by internal mechanism, manipulated 
by a puppet-player, were introduced on the stage. 
Talking starlings were often introduced into the 
mouths of the puppets. 

"Present day puppets are moved by means of 
a thread, as were those of ancient times. 

"The teaching of parrots and starlings to speak 
belonged to the sixty-four arts necessary to the 
education of a girl in India. Some starlings imi- 
tated the human voice so perfectly that puppets 
were frequently mistaken for living beings." 

From India the puppet-play with all its glitter 

34 



PUPPETS AND MARIONETTES 

and mystery traveled to the Island of Java, became 
extraordinarily popular and continues its hold upon 
the people as their most fascinating amusement to 
the present day. 

The players are operated like the ordinary pup- 
pets of our Punch and Judy shows, and usually 
out of doors. The showman stands behind a fence 
with the audience in front. The sexes are sepa- 
rated, the men being comfortably in the front rows, 
while the women are relegated to the rear seats or 
to standing room only if there is not seating accom- 
modations for all. 

The Javanese marionettes are quite different 
from any others, being flat, cut out of wood and 
leather, and elaborately painted and gilded to 
represent costly costumes. They are always ex- 
tremely grotesque, with huge noses or humped 
backs, and their arms are moved by means of long, 
slender sticks suitably attached for the purpose. 

The marionette showman in Java carries his 
odd-looking dolls around with him in his chest, 
and being always accompanied by two or three 
musicians for an orchestra, he is able at any time 
to set up his little theater at a moment's notice. 

Unlike a Punch and Judy show, the play is not 
comic but highly serious. The performance, in- 
deed, is invariably a religious drama and the actors 
of wood and leather represent divinities. 

35 



THE DOLL BOOK 

There are fine collections of Javanese marion- 
ettes in several of our museums. They are con- 
structed of wood and leather and they were used 
to represent the characters of an Oriental Passion 
play. They are for the most part hideous in shape 
and gaudily painted. 

M. Olliver Beauregard says that there are two 
chief theatrical dolls in Java, a Toping mute mask, 
and Wayang spectacle in shadow. In the latter 
a sort of bard rhapsodist operates the dolls and 
tells them their roles of love and war to a musical 
accompaniment. 

The dolls represent historical and mythological 
personages, and this is the best means of teaching 
history and enforcing its morals early. The spec- 
tators are often so interested that they watch them 
play all night. These Javan marionettes are of 
three kinds. Number one, very ancient gods and 
heroes. Number two, celebrants of special festi- 
vals. Number three, common dramatic figures. 
This is the most important of the native amuse- 
ments, coming at the time of the New Year's Feast. 

"Sometimes the Javanese puppets are hump- 
backed," says another authority, "sometimes great 
of paunch; their skinny arms are as long as their 
entire bodies and at all times they bear little 
resemblance to a human figure. 

"These bizarre characteristics are really of 

36 










&C 










PUPPETS AND MARIONETTES 

advantage, for the forms are all conventional, and 
the respective characters are readily recognized 
by the spectators. Two feet is the usual stature 
of these manikins. They are made of thick 
buffalo hide, richly gilded and ornamented with 
Oriental profusion of color." 

In the eighteenth century we read that "Hor- 
ton's show presented 5,000 of these puppets at 
work at various trades in the streets of London. 
At country fairs in Europe puppets were used to 
explain historic incidents to the people; these were 
all moved by clock work." 

Gypsies in all lands have always had a fondness 
for the puppet-play which was easily carried about 
and could be shown anywhere without accessories. 
The Persian gypsies undoubtedly carried the pup- 
pets to Turkey where the shadow-play is to-day 
extremely popular. 

The name Marionette is a modern one. It was 
said to have been given to these puppets by a man 
named Marion who divorced them from the 
Church plays and used them for small comedy 
plays, exhibiting them in Paris. 

Paris has always been fond of these puppets and 
there are to-day several theaters where only mani- 
kin plays are produced. 

The dolls have heads of papier mache, bodies of 
wood, and legs loaded with lead so that they stand 

37 



THE DOLL BOOK 

upright without assistance; they are usually about 
three feet high and their jointed members are 
worked with strings. 

French marionettes are most artistically made, 
so as to resemble human beings as closely as pos- 
sible, and those representing women are frequently 
attired in very fashionable and expensive costumes. 
It is the same with the Italian marionettes, which 
are famous for their dancing, imitating as they do 
the most elaborate and difficult movements of the 
ballet. 

Figures of wood and ivory dressed in fine stuffs 
were used to ornament the funeral of Hiphestion 
of Babylon, and they were also used at the time of 
Phillip of Macedonia. 

Punch and Judy shows in China have a legen- 
dary origin. According to N. B. Dennys in "The 
Folk Lore of China," we find that they are said 
to date back to nearly 300 b. c, when a general 
named Mao-tun was besieging the city of Pingin 
Shensi. The general had a jealous wife who kept 
the green-eyed monster with her all the time. 

Cham-ping, the defender of the beleaguered city, 
knew the weakness of his enemy's wife and through 
it worked her ruin and at the same time brought 
into existence the first Punch and Judy show. 

To arouse her jealousy, he invented a puppet, 
in the shape of a wooden woman, which was made 

38 



PUPPETS AND MARIONETTES 

by strings and springs to dance on the battle- 
ments of the beleaguered town. As he thought 
she would, the lady became alarmed at the idea 
of so fascinating a creature falling into her hus- 
band's hands and becoming an addition to his 
seraglio, and she managed to have the siege 
raised. 

In memory of this, similar, but smaller puppets 
were constructed whose antics have, for more than 
two thousand years, amused the Chinese people. 

The principal puppet used to be known as 
Kwoh, the bald, in memory, as it is averred, of a 
man of that name who, having lost his hair in 
sickness, began to jump and dance on his re- 
covery. 

Ombres Chinoises, as the French call them, are 
shadows of pictures projected upon white sheets 
or gauze screens painted as transparencies by 
means of dolls. The cardboard flat figures are 
held behind the screen, illuminated from behind. 
The performer supports each figure by a long wire 
held in one hand, while wires from all the movable 
parts terminate in rings in which are inserted the 
fingers of the other hand. 

In the Chinese department at the Museum of 
Natural History in New York, there is a fine collec- 
tion of these shadow pictures. They are covered 
with donkey skin and in some cases decorated with 

39 



THE DOLL BOOK 

feathers. They are semi-transparent and mounted 
on painted rods and represent fish, flesh and 
fowl. 

The men are arrayed in elaborate costumes 
correct in every detail as to character. All the 
birds, beasts and fish are wonderfully cut out, 
each one being mounted on the back of a man. 
They are marvelously clever and ingenious. 

Street scenes, occupations, decapitations and all 
other modes of punishment and death that are in 
vogue in the Dragon Empire are set forth by these 
tiny creatures, seven or eight inches high. The 
figures are fine specimens of art in themselves 
without regard to their use. When properly 
worked the. shadows move with great precision, 
while the operator retails the story or explains the 
panorama of daily life that his figures portray. 

In the collection of Chinese marionettes at the 
same Museum there are two or three heads of 
European dolls that look funny enough rising up 
out of the wealth of Chinese garments. 

The bodies of the dolls in this collection are 
made of bamboo, are upright, eight or ten inches 
long, with a head attached and two shorter pieces 
for the arms, by means of which they are worked. 
Many of the heads are masks, grotesque and weird 
in the extreme; others have heads of papier mache 
like dolls. 

40 



\g* 




PUPPETS AND MARIONETTES 

Each one is dressed in costume according to the 
character it represents. They are used in pre- 
senting pantomime plays taken from books or old 
manuscripts. The characters are moved about 
while some one reads the lines belonging to them. 

Francis J. Ziegler in Harper's Magazine writes 
of Italian puppets or Fantoccini as follows: "The 
Fantoccini have capered on the miniature stage 
for centuries without losing one iota of popularity. 
They amused the fashionable under the reigns of 
the Caesars, and they still draw appreciative specta- 
tors in all Italian cities, these little figures of wood 
and cloth, with their painted faces set in ever- 
lasting smiles, their wide-staring eyes and wabbling 
anatomies. 

"The Italians take them seriously enough. To 
them the Fantoccini are real personages, whose 
jerky motions are not ridiculous, but quite in keep- 
ing with the grave and grandiose roles which are 
found in the puppet repertoire. . . . 

"The wires which move the puppets are plainly 
in evidence, and each Fantoccini, when in motion, 
appears to be suffering from a severe attack of 
St. Vitus' Dance; but these peculiarities are 
naught to the spectators who bring to the puppet 
drama an appreciation often lacking at more 
pretentious performances." 

"In Germany puppet shows have existed since 

41 



THE DOLL BOOK 

the twelfth century. Originally religious in char- 
acter, they afterward became fantastic produc- 
tions, in which mechanical appliances caused 
grewsome transformations. 

"In a puppet show representing 'The Prodigal 
Son,' for example, racks would be rent to disclose 
corpses hanging on the gallows ; bread would turn 
to a skull in the prodigal's hands; water would be 
transformed to blood and similar horrors would be 
frequent throughout the drama. 

"During the seventeenth century German theat- 
rical performers came under the ban of the Church, 
which denounced them as vagabonds and law- 
breakers; as a consequence marionettes usurped 
their place on the histrionic boards and enjoyed 
great popularity in both high and low circles. 

"Puncinella came to London in 1666, when an 
Italian puppet player set up his booth at Charing 
Cross, and paid a small rental to the overseers of 
St. Martin's parish. His name was at once Eng- 
lished into Punchinello which became completely 
Anglicized as Punch. 

"Robert Powel appeared as a puppet manager 
in 1703, exhibiting his show not only in London, 
but in Bath and Oxford as well. In these plays 
Punch acted the buffoon amid a strange gather- 
ing of characters, which included King Solomon, 
Doctor Faustus, the Duke of Lorraine, St. George 

42 



PUPPETS AND MARIONETTES 

and other personages from profane and religious 
history. 

"It was Punch who seated himself unceremoni- 
ously in the Queen of Sheba's lap, and Punch again 
who danced in the Ark and hailed Noah with 'a 
hazy weather, Mr. Noah,' when the patriarch was 
intent on navigating the flood." 

Puppets have never won much recognition in 
this country. Punch and Judy occasionally excites 
the merriment of the younger folk at a church fair 
or similar entertainment, and twenty years ago a 
troupe of realistic marionettes, as large as children 
acted in pantomime on the regular boards. But 
we are too busy a people to squander time on the 
puppet show and too practical a people to see 
anything heroic in the Fantoccini. 

One puppet play in India was called "The Man 
With Two Wives." Both figures were women; 
the husband apparently being cognizant of the 
fact that discretion is the better part of valor, 
wisely remained away and let the two carry out the 
play or fight by themselves. 

After the Scottish Lords and other leaders of 
the Stuart uprising of 1745 were executed on Tower 
Hill, the beheading of puppets made one of the 
exhibitions at May Fair and was a feature of the 
gathering for many years after. 

"Readers of Cervantes' immortal work will re- 

43 



THE DOLL BOOK 

member the zest with which the puppet show is 
described, and the reality with which Don Quixote 
invests the performance, and students of early 
English dramatic literature will be equally fami- 
liar with the amusing close of Ben Jonson's play, 
Bartholomew Fair, which takes place at the per- 
formance of a drama on the adventures of Hero 
and Leander, acted by puppets in one of the 
booths." 



44 



CHAPTER V 

FASHION DOLLS 

WHEN or why the ecclesiastical puppet 
and the companion of the dead be- 
came the meplium of shadowing forth 
the coming fashions and of carrying 
them from one country to another is not clearly 
shown, but that they did become so corrupted is 
proved by the fact that wooden or waxen figures 
were used in Venice for this purpose in the early 
part of the fourteenth century. They were shown 
at the annual Fair on Assumption Day dressed in 
the mode that was to prevail during the coming 
year. 

It is claimed by a French writer that the custom 
of dressing dolls or figures to show the fashions 
originated in the Hotel Rambouillet where a figure 
called la grande Pandora was exhibited in full 
dress at each change of fashion. There was also 
a smaller one called la petite Pandora which was 
garbed in the politest of undress. In spite of this 
assertion it is very probable that the custom in 

45 



THE DOLL BOOK 

part or in its entirety was borrowed from Venice 
at the time when the Queen of the Adriatic ruled 
the fashionable as well as the ecclesiastical world. 

It is asserted that in the list of royal expenditures 
for the year 1391 in France, there is recorded a 
certain number of lires for a doll sent to the Queen 
of England. An hundred years later one was sent 
to the Queen of Spain and at the close of another 
century a very expensive doll was sent to the 
Duchess of Bavaria. 

We further read that Henry IV. of France wrote 
to Marie de Medicis, in the year 1600, as follows: 
"Frontenac tells me that you desire patterns of our 
fashions in dress. I send you therefore some model 
dolls." 

These puppets were used by hairdressers as 
well as by milliners and dressmakers. In 1727 a 
French doll was sent around among the ladies of 
the bed-chamber attached to Queen Caroline's 
court. It was a little young lady dressed in court 
costume, and it was shown with the reservation 
that when all had studied it to their satisfaction it 
was to be given to Mrs. Tempest, the court mil- 
liner, to keep for a model in the future. In the 
eighteenth century most continental countries re- 
ceived their fashions from Paris. Deisbeck, writ- 
ing from Vienna in 1788, says: "The people of 
this city generally follow the French fashions, 

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FASHION DOLLS 

dolls being brought from Paris so that the ladies 
may get their dressmakers to copy costumes." 

Mrs. Bury Pallisser tells us that, in 1764, numbers 
of dolls had been made in France in the shape and 
size of full-grown human beings and were landed 
at Dover, dressed in richest laces, thus enabling 
English women to get the latest fashions and to 
import expensive Flanders lace without duty, under 
the very noses of the inspectors. 

When English ports were closed in war times, 
they were obligingly open to an alabaster doll four 
feet high, called i( le grand Courrier, de la Mode." 
In the war of the first Empire this privilege was 
withdrawn, and from that time, Mrs. Pallisser con- 
tinues, "English women began to dress badly and 
the cause of it rests upon the shoulders of Pitt." 

That America did not fail to receive her quota 
of French and English fashions in the same manner 
is shown by the following advertisement which 
appeared in the New England Weekly Journal, in 
1733: 

"To be seen at Mrs. Hannah Teatts, mantua- 
maker, at the head of Summer St., Boston, a baby 
dressed after the newest fashions of mantuas and 
nightgowns and everything belonging to a dress, 
lately arrived on the Captain White from London." 

There are other and amusing advertisements of 
"fashion babies" to be found in the early American 

47 



THE DOLL BOOK 

newspapers. Ladies going abroad were earnestly 
petitioned to send back the fashion dolls that those 
who remained at home might not be too far behind 
the mode. 

Even the staid Quakers did not disdain their use, 
for it was their desire to fold their kerchief and 
regulate the width of their hat brims after the 
fashion set by their English brothers and sisters. 
Some of these old dolls are now treasured in Quaker 
families that have long ago discarded the plain 
dress, though they retain the plain speech in the 
intimacy of their family lives. 

According to Alice Morse Earle, these dolls 
were called " little ladies" and " babies," until the 
middle of the eighteenth century, when the word 
doll came into use in the New World. Fashions 
changed and the methods of importing them also; 
thus the little wooden figures would have fallen into 
ignominious graves had the children not rescued 
them and set them up as queens of the play-room. 

In the time of Louis VI., fashion dolls were very 
much in evidence on the Continent. The original 
was life-size, dressed in the latest style of Versailles 
or the Palais-Royal and called La Poupee de la 
Rue Saint Honore* 

Replicas of this were sent to England, Germany, 
Italy and Spain, and set out before the eyes of the 

* Katherine de Forest in " Paris as It Is." 

48 



FASHION DOLLS 

courts, very much as the Buddhists and Brahmins 
set up their goddesses. The French archives tell 
us that Catherine de Medici had sixteen of these 
dolls, and that she dressed them in mourning after 
the death of her husband, to correspond with her 
black-hung walls. 

In the middle of the eighteenth century, the 
fashion journals spoke of these dolls as follows: 
"Dolls are always imperfect and very dear; while 
at best they can give but a vague idea of the 
fashions." Some of these old figures are to be 
found in the Muse Carnavalet. 

Fashion dolls are used to-day for purposes of 
demonstration; they have an atmospheric value 
and are modern; of cheap German manufacture 
and their only function is that of a dummy for the 
exhibition of foreign costumes. 

They are clad in the native Breton, Swiss, Nor- 
man, Dutch or other peasant costumes and are 
sent to watering-places throughout Europe and to 
the trade in xVmerica. These dolls seldom please 
a child, unless she is old enough to understand 
what foreign costumes mean, and then often a rag 
doll of home manufacture is preferred. 

French has been the court language for centuries ; 
French costumes have been worn by the better 
classes, more or less, all over the world, so that it 
is to the poor people that one must look for native 



THE DOLL BOOK 

dress. The peasants of Normandy and Brittany 
are perhaps the most picturesque people of Europe, 
with the possible exception of the Italian contadina. 

The headdress and bodice are the distinguishing 
marks all over the Continent. Some of the bodices 
are preserved through generations of daughters 
with all the respect due to a sacerdotal vestment. 
The peasants of Normandy wear caps of muslin 
and lace, made stiff with starch, that rise a foot or 
more above the head, and make the little women 
look almost like dwarfs. The bridal cap of these 
women is an enlarged edition of the common one 
that almost envelops the wearer. 

The matter of universal fashion is something to 
make the artistic as well as the judicious grieve; 
for what shall differentiate us, when all the world 
wears clothes from the same fashion emporium and 
speaks the same language. The quaint head- 
dresses and caps, the velvet bodices and chains and 
the wooden shoes, the baggy trousers and the bright 
coloring of the peasants' costumes are fast disap- 
pearing before the civilizing effects of steam and 
electricity. Old fashion plates and a few figures 
garbed in the native costume are all that is left 
of a past not far behind us. They are features of 
amazing interest even though they show but the 
mutability of fashion and are a commentary on the 
past generations. 

50 



CHAPTER VI 

ORIENTAL DOLLS 

THE most fascinating doll in all the Orient 
is the loaded doll made of papier mache, 
weighted with clay at the bottom so 
that however tilted or tipped up it will 
right itself. 

In his delightful book on Korean games, Mr. 
Stewart Culin says of these dolls: "The commonest 
and most popular toy of all is the Ot-tok-i, 'erect 
standing one.' This is an image made of paper, 
with rounded bottom filled with clay, so that it 
always stands erect. The figure represents a 
woman who sometimes rides upon a tiger. 

"The eighth day of the fourth month is the day 
celebrated in Japan as the birthday of Buddha, 
called the Kwam butsuye. It would appear from 
this that the Korean festival was originally Bud- 
dhistic and probably that the Ot-tok-i were once 
images of Buddha. They may, however, have 
had a still greater antiquity and been associated 
with some earlier religious celebration, possibly 
connected with the vernal equinox. The toy called 

51 



THE DOLL BOOK 

the Ot-tok-i, which has many counterparts through- 
out the world, may be regarded as a possible sur- 
vival of the image of a deity which was anciently 
worshiped in Korea at this season. 

"In Japan the 'tilting toy/ for so this image 
may be conveniently styled, is made to represent 
the idol Daruma, and receives the name of that per- 
sonage. It is also called oki agari Icoboshi, ' rising 
up little priest.' In purchasing these toys the chil- 
dren are careful to buy those that are weighted so 
as to rise up quickly. Imperfect ones are regarded 
as unlucky. 

"The Wa Kan san sai dzue has a picture of a 
toy representing a Buddhist priest, which is in- 
clined as if to represent a tilting toy, which may 
be due to an attempt of the artist to show the toy 
as lying down. This, with a picture of a toy dog, 
is described under the heading Tsuchi ning yo, or 
'clay images with the Chinese equivalent of not 
so yan> literally clay modeled men/ and to Yan 
Ying (another name), 'clay images.' It relates to 
the Shing ju ron (Chinese Ts'ien fu lun) 9 and 
says: 'The people of the present day make clay 
carts and pottery dogs. These it says are the 
clay images of the present day, made by putting clay 
in molds of human shape, dogs, lions and mon- 
keys, which are used as children's playthings.' 

"The name tsuchi ning yo is applied in Japan 

52 



* 







1 



OMENTAL DOLLS 

to the clay images of men and horses which were 
anciently buried with the dead to take the place 
of living sacrifices, and which are now excavated 
from ancient sepulchers. 

"The foregoing would seem to indicate a cere- 
monial use of the tilting toy in ancient Japan, 
especially if it should appear that the tsuchi ning- 
yo were actually made in this form. However, 
the sacrificial images from the ancient graves, as 
shown by original paintings in the Museum of the 
University of Pennsylvania, do not appear to have 
a rounded base, and the associations of the toy in 
Japan are entirely Buddhistic. 

"The Bijutsu Sekai or * World of Fine Arts/ 
May, 1891, gives a picture of what appears to be a 
tilting toy, with the English title of 'ancient doll.' 
The Japanese text states that it is by Kozi Shoseki 
and represents an ancient earthen idol, dogu, the 
original supposed to be made by Tosaku Kurat 
sukur, Busshi (maker of Buddhistic idols). 

"In Southern China, Canton, the tilting toy is 
called ta pat to, 'struck not fall.' It is made of 
stiff paper, not cardboard, painted red to represent 
an old man holding a fan. In India, as shown by 
a specimen sent to the Columbian Museum, Chi- 
cago, from the provincial museum, Lucknow, 
this toy is made of paper and designated as posti, 
or 'one addicted to opium.' 

53 



THE DOLL BOOK 

"In France this toy is made to represent a 
Chinese mandarin, and is called Le noussah. This 
name is borrowed from the Chinese, being the 
words pV sat, a term applied in China to Budd- 
histic idols. It is the Chinese form of the Sanskrit 
Bodhisattva. 

"In Madrid, Spain, this is sold with other chil- 
dren's toys at the annual fair in the autumn. Two 
purchased by the writer in 1892 represent a monk 
and a nun. 

"In Germany the tilting toy is a common play- 
thing, and is largely manufactured with other 
toys for export. It is made in the form of a 
grotesque human figure, and called Putzelmann 
(South Germany) or Butzenmann (North and 
Central Germany), a name which has been re- 
garded as meaning the same as the English bogy 
man. 

"A more direct etymology has been found in the 
German purzel, 'somersault.' It is not improb- 
able, however, that the form butzen is, as so often 
happens, a species of popular etymology to connect 
an originally foreign word in sound. In view of 
the difficulty encountered by the Germanic scholars 
in satisfactorily accounting for the name of the 
toy, the question suggests itself, whether it is not 
an altered and corrupt form of Buddha, as is 
directly apparent in the French name. 

54 



ORIENTAL DOLLS 

"In Sweden this toy is called Trollgubbe or 'old 
goblin.' 

"Tilting toys of a variety of forms are sold in the 
United States. They are chiefly of foreign manu- 
facture and are known by various names. In 
Maryland they were formerly called 'Bouncing 
Betty' and in Philadelphia thirty years ago, 
'Bouncing Billy.' A miniature tilting toy was 
common in the United States about the same time, 
and locally known as 'tilt up.' 

"Objects of stone and pottery, simulating a 
human figure and having a rounded base like the 
Ot-tok-i, are found widely distributed among the 
Indian tribes of the United States. They were 
used in ceremonials and as objects connected with 
worship. A striking example of such an image is 
represented upon a vase of pottery from an Indian 
grave in southwestern Missouri, collected by Mr. 
Horatio N. Rust. It forms one of a series of 
similar objects in the Philadelphia University 
Museum, the evolution of which can be traced 
clearly from the gourd vessel imitated in pottery 
by the aid of examples in the same collection. 

"In Korea little girls make their own dolls. 
They cut a bamboo pipe stem about five inches 
long into the top of which they put long grass, 
which they have salted, made soft, and fixed like 
the hair of a woman. No face is made, but they 

55 



THE DOLL BOOK 

sometimes paste a little white powder in its place. 
They dress the stick in clothes like those worn by 
women and sometimes put a hairpin, which they 
make themselves, into the hair. 

"The children of Korea make shadow pictures 
on the wall with the hand as we do, but they are 
always intended to represent a priest of Buddha. 

"Shadow pictures are also made on the wall in 
Japan where they are called kage ye, literally 
'shadow pictures.' The commonest one is that of 
the tori sashi, a person who catches birds with a 
pole armed with bird-line. Other shadow pictures 
are made in Japan by means of small figures cut 
in black paper and mounted on sticks. These are 
called suki ye (light), 'passing through pictures.'" 

My collection is rich in Chinese dolls; a friend 
living in Shanghai has interested herself in the 
subject, and with the help of her boy has succeeded 
in finding many a rare and curious doll. 

The "tilt up" or roly-poly doll which English- 
speaking children have come to call German, be- 
cause the most common representation of it here 
is an old German woman with a baby in her arms, 
is the oldest kind of doll in China. 

Dolls as well as people fall under the inexorable 
law set down in the Book of Rites, which governs 
the style of dress and conduct of the Chinese from 
the cradle to the grave. The length, cut and 

56 



ORIENTAL DOLLS 

material of the dress worn by the poorest coolie is 
as carefully set down as the coat of arms, buttons 
and peacock feather of the royal family and 
mandarins. The initiated needs but a glance to 
tell the class, or station in life, a doll represents. 

Dolls belonging to the old Chinese families have 
tiny deformed feet like those of the ladies. Al- 
though these dolls are nearly three hundred years 
old, the Chinese consider them quite modern. 

The ancient Chinese doll served a twofold pur- 
pose; it instructed as well as amused the chil- 
dren, whether it represented an historical, or a 
mythological character; it had a history repeated 
times innumerable in response to the reiterated 
demand for "a story," thereby fixing the narrative 
in the child's mind, until in the course of time it 
had unconsciously imbibed a very generous knowl- 
edge of history. 

The ancient little manikins invariably repre- 
sented emperors and the various members of the 
royal family, celebrated generals, great scholars, 
historical characters, actors and other men of 
prominence. 

Two of these tilt up dolls in my collection came 
from Shanghai and with them the endorsement that 
they represent members of the royal family and 
that all the ornamentations and decorations are 
exact copies from life. The court dress is repro- 

m 



THE DOLL BOOK 

duced in the proper crude coloring; and the out- 
standing gilt ear pieces with the curious characters 
that to the initiated read, "Long life, happiness 
and many children," are facsimiles of those in the 
Emperor's cap. 

With these dolls came the story that they are 
not only the playthings of children but of men of 
the higher class. 

An after-dinner game somewhat resembling our 
"whirl the platter," is played with them. When 
dinner is over and the table cleared, the doll and a 
bottle of samshu are brought in and placed before 
the host, who takes a drink and sets the image 
whirling down the table. 

The man whom he faces when he stops whirling, 
has the privilege of taking a drink of samshu, the 
Chinese sherry. He starts the doll off on another 
whirling expedition and the game goes on for 
hours ; meantime some men get a great many 
drinks and others get very few, according to the 
chances of the game. Still some men get so expert 
that they can whirl the doll so as to stop it where 
they please. 

The tilt up doll serves another purpose, as wit- 
ness the following from a recent book by Frances 
Little. The writer of the paragraph was a kinder- 
garten teacher in Japan and the quotation is from 
one of her letters home: 

58 



ORIENTAL DOLLS 

"Have you ever seen those dolls that have a weight 
in them so that you can push them over and they 
stand right up again? Well, I have one of them 
and her name is Susie Damn. When things reach 
the limit of endurance, I take it out of Susie Damn 
a la Maggie Tulliver. I box her jaws and knock 
her over and she comes up every time with such a 
pleasant smile that I get in good humor again." 

There has been until quite recently a noticeable 
absence of feminine dolls in China; the baby doll 
has only lately made its appearance, and is still 
quite a young child. My specimen shows Euro- 
pean influence much more than the larger and 
older dolls, as nearly all its wearing apparel is 
made of foreign fabric. Its skirts are quite short 
and it is wrapped in a square of heavy goods, the 
two side points, and the one at the feet, being 
fastened securely around the doll's body. The 
fourth point extends up over the head, and serves 
the purpose of a cap, in a sensible as well as an 
amusing way. 

Chinese children prize their dolls far more than 
European or American children do, for the reason 
that they are only allowed to play with them at 
allotted times. They are never permitted to beat 
or bruise them; they are taught to handle them 
carefully, as dolls are preserved from generation 
to generation. 

59 



THE DOLL BOOK 

A very ancient doll with fierce mustaches and 
long hair represents one of the gods of the upper 
and lower regions and is very much revered, as it 
is used in various religious ceremonies and carried 
in processions, as the Virgin and Child are in 
Roman Catholic countries. 

The doll in China, as elsewhere, is the expression 
of the individual or the nation; thus one finds 
Manchu dolls with feet of natural size, like those 
of the Empress and all the women of her court. 
Many of the dolls seen at the present time represent 
the various classes that live in the provinces. One 
finds them dressed in characters, from the Emperor 
in his yellow-roofed palace to the commonest Can- 
tonese coolie. 

A pair of more modern dolls in my collection 
belong to the present Manchu dynasty — the wom- 
an's feet, as will be seen, are of natural size — 
they are a Manchu general and his wife, who stand 
about twenty inches high and are wired to a solid 
base. They were part of the loot of the Emperor's 
palace in Pekin during the late war and are admir- 
able specimens of art. Their faces are very 
expressive, being exact counterparts of high-class 
Manchus. 

They are a charming pair; the garments of 
Madam are bedight with rich embroidery, and 
her slippers, which stand on wooden heels three 

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ORIENTAL DOLLS 

inches high, are covered with spangles so arranged 
that the toes look like the heads of dragons. 

A band of velvet and embroidery covers the 
forehead and part of the head on the side of which 
is coquettishly set a "red, red rose." The Gen- 
eral's boots are high and thick soled and the entire 
wardrobes of the pair are absolutely correct as 
to cut, color and decoration. 

It will be remembered that the Chinese have 
little choice in the matter of dress. Each one 
wears the garments of his class, the proper decora- 
tion and color of which was decided for him hun- 
dreds of years ago. 

A doll from Souchow wears the common clothes 
of the ordinary woman, a narrow skirt of dark 
blue, with a loose jacket of the same material, 
wadded. Under this jacket she has another jacket 
of brocaded material; her shoes are made of cloth 
with soles of several thicknesses of paper, like 
those worn by the women of the class she repre- 
sents. 

She has a band of black velvet across her fore- 
head which is fastened under the hair at the back, 
and judging by her severely plain hair is appar- 
ently an old woman, although her face does not 
show age. 

A Manchu nobleman wears the inverted wash- 
bowl hat, tassel and feather which indicates his 

61 



THE DOLL BOOK 

rank. Like all people of his class, he wears an 
embroidered chest-protector that indicates to the 
initiated his family or social status. 

A Pekinese woman and her servant are admir- 
able counterfeits of the real thing. Her feet are 
so tiny that she could not by any chance stand 
alone, and her shoes are richly embroidered. 

She wears trousers, as the women of China have 
worn them for hundreds of years. They are 
trimmed with bands of rich material and handsome 
embroidery, and are made of fine brocade like 
her upper garment, which is very elaborately 
trimmed. 

Her hair is smoothly laid in front and held in 
place with a velvet band which is the foundation 
for handsome gold ornaments, embroidery and 
artificial flowers. Her earrings are so large and 
elaborate that they rest on her shoulders. 

Her servant is very plainly dressed in dark blue 
and she wears many ornaments in her hair. Her 
feet are of natural size and she must be constantly 
by her mistress' side to assist her whenever she 
stands or walks. 

The faces of all three are carefully molded of fine 
composition and are exceedingly well made. They 
are unmistakably Chinese faces. 

A Shanghai bride wears the embroidered-pleated 
red wedding gown of her class with a plastron 

62 



ORIENTAL DOLLS 

down the front. Her head is adorned by a close- 
fitting cap covered with pearl beads; a thick red 
veil, with pearl fringes covering it, hides her face. 
She wears trousers underneath her gown and the 
tiniest of red shoes. 

The bridegroom is gowned in the beautiful 
purple the Chinese love so well; the square of em- 
broidery on his breast and sleeves indicating his 
rank. His pigtail is carefully braided and his head 
covered with a close cap. 

A curious figure that shows how the small- 
footed women have to be carried about, even in 
the house and garden, is in the Museum of Natural 
History, New York. 

A Shanghai woman of the better class wears the 
pleated skirt with bands of embroidery up and 
down the broad front pleat, and around the bot- 
tom. The upper garment is made of brocade and 
trimmed with bands of embroidery. Her bandeau 
is velvet with ornaments of gold and feathers; 
from her tiny ears are suspended enormous ear- 
rings of seed pearls. 

The omnipresent Chinese boy is represented 
true to life. His garments are silken, exquisitely 
made and fastened with loops of fine braid. A 
skull cap covers his head and his long pigtail is 
eked out with strands of black thread. 

A Chinese paper doll has a papier mache head 

63 



THE DOLL BOOK 

with flat pasteboard body dressed in colored paper; 
he carries a bamboo cane and a paper hat or cap 
is perched on his head. 

In China the 7th day of the New Year is cele- 
brated with honor. Dolls, or figures representing 
the gods of happiness, rank, longevity, health, etc., 
are cut out, and dressed in many colored garments, 
and hung up at the doors of all houses, as omens 
of good luck. 

In certain kinds of illness, special puppets are 
used in the belief that they are able to restore the 
invalid to health. The principal one is a fac- 
simile of the goddess "Mother"; these puppets are 
made to play, and to dance back and forth near 
the door of the sick room several times, and then 
having exhausted their power, are taken away. If 
the sick person recovers, the family must give a 
puppet-show. 

The more one knows of the Chinese, the more 
is he bound to respect their knowledge of science 
and certain forms of art. Their ingenuity de- 
velops many a grand and comical conceit, which 
shows that they have a well developed sense of 
their own kind of humor. 

There is an annual custom among East Indian 
little girls that must be very hard on them, par- 
ticularly if they are not able to buy all the dolls 
they wish. At a certain season of the year, on the 

64 



ORIENTAL DOLLS 

Dassivah Feast, they dress themselves in their 
best costumes and go to the nearest river or water 
tank and solemnly cast their little dollies into it. 

It is a curious rite and said by some writers to 
be in imitation of the adults' custom of putting 
their dead into the Ganges, which is considered a 
sacred river. Other writers with more plausibility, 
say that the girls offer up their dolls as a pro- 
pitiatory sacrifice to the goddess who presides over 
the destinies of the river; that formerly children 
were thrown into the water to appease the wrath 
of the river god, but that one time an humane 
ruler forbade this practice, and that figures took 
the place of the children, and that the figures grew 
smaller and smaller until they were like the girls' 
dolls. Whatever the origin of the custom, it is a 
curious one, and as the girls get no more dolls for 
three months, I am sure they cannot be very fond 
of it. The fete lasts nine days; on the last day, 
boys come and toss in their toys. The little dolls 
are only made of clay, very likely for this purpose, 
painted and dressed like their elders, but they 
cannot but be dear to the children, who must dis- 
like to see their beloved playthings sink out of 
sight or float away down the stream. 

A European doll gives the greatest delight to 
Indian girls; they love the blue eyes and flaxen 
hair, as the greatest contrast to their own brown 

65 



THE DOLL BOOK 

faces. European dolls are given as prizes in the 
mission schools. Missionaries write home to ask 
for dolls with clothes that can be put on and taken 
off, but beg that no wax dolls will be sent, as the 
climate is too hot for them. 

An English society sent out a box of dolls to 
India, most of them dressed in white, as is the 
home custom. The teachers were aghast when 
they opened the box, for white is the color of 
mourning in India, and it would never do to give 
these to the little ones, so they gathered together 
and put on colored aprons, ribbons and trimmings 
where they could, and colored dresses where other 
alterations were not possible, before they presented 
them to their classes. 

Human figures in clay, dressed to the life, are 
made by the clever, artistic people of Krishnagar, 
Bengal, Lucknow and Poona. The traveler will 
find numerous collections of these in the various 
museums. Some writer on India has declared 
that there are more gods in the country than there 
are people. Many of these are in the human form, 
and while, strictly speaking, they are not dolls, 
still in many instances they do serve as children's 
playthings, like the god-dolls of the North American 
Indians. 

In many houses in India, dolls have a room to 
themselves, they are so numerous; they are made 

66 



ORIENTAL DOLLS 

of clay, wood and other materials and painted in 
gay colors. 

In a "Peep Behind the Purdah," Edmund 
Russel says of East Indian dolls: "When a girl 
takes her first lesson in cooking — between four and 
five years old — to celebrate this her mother permits 
her to invite her little girl friends to a doll's mar- 
riage — such funny dolls! wood, terra cotta, plaster 
— all bits of cloth and tiny jewels." 



67 



CHAPTER VII 

JAPANESE DOLLS 

THE Japanese puppets and shadow dolls are 
very similar to those of China, and finding 
nothing to the contrary, one is led to sup- 
pose that the Japanese children received 
their first dolls from China, along with law, religion 
and the arts, the afterflow perhaps of some one of 
the many wars between the two countries, or of a 
war with Korea. 

The dolls of China and Japan differ from each 
other as much as the people of the two countries 
do, which is really a good deal, although many 
casual observers cannot differentiate one from the 
other. 

One writer on the subject suggests that the clay 
figures dressed to the life and made to do duty at 
the graves of the dead, instead of representing 
servants and relatives that were sacrificed at the 
time of the funeral in the long-gone dark ages of 
the past, might have been the progenitors of the 
present-day doll. This is hardly probable, how- 

68 



JAPANESE DOLLS 

ever, as these puppets were used in other Oriental 
countries, and besides, dolls from Egypt antedate 
the use of the puppets. 

The first Japanese dolls represented gods of the 
country, mythological beings, demi-gods, evil and 
beneficent deities in certain religious ceremonies 
and plays. Some of the modern ones belong to 
this class, but not many. An occasional family 
may treasure several specimens of these, but they 
are veritable antiques, having been in the family 
for centuries. Dolls are preserved and treasured 
and passed on from one generation to another, 
more perhaps than in any other country in the 
world. 

The Japanese doll inheritance is a striking ex- 
ample of family fife and so far as I have been able 
to discover one peculiar to that country. It is a 
beautiful idea and one which we might adopt with 
pleasure and profit. 

When a little Japanese maiden is born there is 
bought for her a small collection of dolls consisting 
of effigies of the Emperor, the Empress and five 
court musicians. 

The Emperor and Empress wear tinsel crowns 
and carry in their hands the insignia of their office 
and sit flat upon a dias as was the olden custom, 
for the traditions of the reigning family are dear 
even to the poorest peasants. 

69 



THE DOLL BOOK 

The same small child is never allowed to play 
with these except upon high days and holidays, 
the principal one being the annual feast of dolls of 
Hina Matsuri. 

This takes place on the third day of the month 
and is the great children's festival of the year; the 
girl's Christmas. Tiny invitations of the beautiful 
Japanese paper stamped with the girl's own seal, 
are sent out all over Japan and the children go, not 
only from house to house, but from city to city to see 
these wonderful dolls. 

This festival lasts three days during which all 
the dolls are on exhibition. All the remainder of 
the year they are locked up in the fire-proof go- 
down or store house, where the careful Japanese 
keeps his treasures. 

The first day of the festival the dolls are taken 
out and arranged on tiers of red-covered shelves 
built for the purpose. They are placed according 
to their rank as they would be in real life, the 
historic members of the royal family taking the 
exalted position, followed by their suites and re- 
tainers, all complete in the smallest detail. 

During the three days' festival the Japanese 
tiny maidens are quite wild with delight, made 
manifest by soft laughter and a gentle chatter- 
ing of musical voices. For every doll there is a 
complete set of doll furnishings, cooking and 

70 




1-3 e3 




JAPANESE DOLLS 

kitchen utensils and a multitude of toilet articles 
that might well bewilder a strange child. 

Cherry Blossom and Peach Bloom are dressed in 
their brightest and prettiest kimonos and they 
clatter about on their little wooden clogs looking 
like gay birds of paradise. The morning of life is 
beautiful in any country and with one or two excep- 
tions which need not be mentioned here, the life 
of the Japanese child is ideal. 

Some white saki, the Japanese rice wine, is 
purposely brewed weak for the children. This 
they offer to the dolls in the tiniest of egg-shell 
saki-cups and later when a certain time has elapsed, 
gravely proceed to drink it themselves. 

When the girl marries, she takes the hina with 
her to her new home and keeps them until her 
eldest son marries, when they become his property. 
Thus it will be seen that in time a family may be- 
come the possessor of a valuable collection. The 
family of the last Shogun, the Tokugawas, is said 
to possess several fine hinas, in fact, the largest 
and finest collection in Japan. 

J. J. Rein says of this day: "The female sex 
appears in holiday attire. The whole household 
store of dolls, among which are many old family 
treasures, are brought out for the girls and set up 
in a special room. The living dolls entertain the 
dead ones with food and drink, the former con- 

71 



THE DOLL BOOK 

sisting of shiro-cake or white sweet cake. In 
Kiobashidora at Tokio, where the shops are large 
and splendid, and some of the dolls expensive, 
there is great activity on this day. Formerly the 
Feast of Dolls fell, as a rule, in April, when the 
favorite sakura trees are in blossom, a bloom which 
resembles our peach tree." 

Bayard Taylor, in speaking of this occasion, 
says: "Mothers adorn the chamber with blossom- 
ing peach boughs and arrange therein an exhibi- 
tion of all the dolls which their daughters have 
received; these represent the Mikado and Court 
personages for whom a banquet is prepared, which 
is consumed by the guests of the evening." 

* "At every temple festival in Japan there is 
a sale of toys. And every mother, however poor, 
buys her child a toy. They are not costly, and are 
charming. Many of these toys would seem odd 
to a little English child. There is a tiny drum, 
a model of the drum used in the temple ; or a mini- 
ature sambo table, upon which offerings are pre- 
sented to the gods. There is a bunch of bells 
fastened to a wooden handle. It resembles a rattle, 
but it is a model of the sacred suzu which the virgin 
priestess uses in her dance before the gods. Then 
there are tiny images of priests and gods and god- 

*From the epitome of "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan," in Doctor 
Gould's recent book, "Concerning Xafcadio Hearn," p 263. 

72 



JAPANESE DOLLS 

desses. There is little of grimness in the faiths 
of the Far East; their gods smile. 'Why religion 
should be considered too awful a subject for 
children to amuse themselves decently with never 
occurs to the common Japanese mind.' 

"Besides these, there are pretty toys illustrating 
some fairytale or superstition and many other 
playthings of clever devices, and the little doll, 
O-Hina-San (Honorable Miss Hina) which is a 
type of Japanese girl beauty. The doll in Japan 
is a sacred part of the household. There is a belief 
that if it is treasured long enough it becomes alive 
Such a doll is treated like a real child; it is sup- 
posed to possess supernatural powers. One had 
such rare powers that childless couples used to 
borrow it. They would minister to it, and would 
give it a new outfit of clothes before returning it to 
its owners. All who did this became parents. 
To the Japanese a new doll is only a doll; but a 
doll that has received the love of many generations 
acquires a soul. A little Japanese girl was asked, 
'How can a doll live?' 'Why,' was the lovely 
answer, '// you love it enough, it will live! 9 

"Never is the corpse of a doll thrown away. 
When it has become so worn out that it must be 
considered quite dead, it is either burned or cast 
in running water, or it is dedicated to the God 
Kojin. In almost every temple ground there is 

73 



THE DOLL BOOK 

planted a tree called enoki, which is sacred to 
Kojin. Before the tree will be a little shrine, and 
either there or at the foot of the sacred tree, the sad 
little remains will be laid. Seldom during the life- 
time of its owner is a doll given to Kojin. 

"When you see one thus exposed, you may be 
almost certain that it was found among the effects 
of some poor dead woman — the innocent memento 
of her girlhood, perhaps even also of the girlhood 
of her mother and of her mother's mother." 

A doll dressed as the daughter of a Samurai was 
the first doll of my collection, the nucleus around 
which I have gathered several hundred of her 
"sisters, cousins and aunts," from all parts of the 
world. It came into my possession as follows: I 
had been admiring the dolls and toys an English 
friend in Yokohama had bought for Christmas, 
and said : "These dolls are so handsome, I would 
like one myself." 

Imagine my surprise at receiving this beautiful 
doll early Christmas morning; everybody laughed 
and seemed to think it a great joke, but I was so 
delighted with the dear creature that I did not see 
any joke about it, and Cherry Blossom has been 
one of my pleasantest souvenirs of that Japanese 
Christmas. 

The real Japanese dolls, those that the natives 
use are made with absolute fidelity to nature. 

74 



JAPANESE DOLLS 

These people who manifest the sex they find in 
flowers, foliage and everything in nature, see no 
reason for making a sexless doll. As a conse- 
quence, some very proper and conventional peo- 
ple have been a bit shocked when they discovered 
the Japanese doll in its entirety. Dolls manufac- 
tured for export at the present day are minus all 
unnecessary organs. 

The favorite doll among foreign children is one 
possessed of several wigs, with hair coiffured in 
different styles, so that the same doll may do duty 
one day as a young lady with bright kimono and 
red petticoat, and obi tied butterfly fashion; while 
the next day, without waiting for Father Time to 
get in his work, she may be easily transformed into 
a grandmother, with somber clothes and iron-gray 
hair combed severely back and twisted into a knot 
in the nape of the neck. 

A young girl always wears a red petticoat which 
is the badge of her maidenhood; once she is 
married, she puts it away for her daughter's use. 
Some pessimistic people have a way of wishing a 
bride good luck by saying they hope "love will not 
fly away with the red petticoat." 

A wife's garments may be as handsome and 
expensive as she likes to make them, especially 
her obi, or sash, but they must be of subdued 
colors, gray, brown, dark blue, etc.; the bright 

75 



THE DOLL BOOK 

colors belong to the young and unmarried. The 
obi is usually the most costly article of a woman's 
wardrobe; when woven of real gold cord, it may 
cost hundreds of dollars, and is kept as an heir- 
loom in the family for generations. The doll in 
my collection has five wigs, a basket of flowers and 
a giddy parasol with which to transform herself into 
several high-class personages. She is perfect of her 
kind. 

Another doll shows the method of carrying chil- 
dren, attached to the back with a slender band like 
suspenders. I also have a dozen or more most 
fascinating baby Japanese, with their shaven heads 
and kimonos cut in exactly the same fashion as the 
mothers. 

A doll that was sent to me labeled "A Japanese 
Lady," is so palpably a doll of European manu- 
facture, though dressed in a kimono, that I call 
her my "Eurasian," i.e., half European and half 
Asiatic. 

My emperor and empress are marvels of ar- 
tistic realism. They are sitting, each on a dais, 
exactly as the present Emperor and his ancestors 
sat for hundreds of years before Commodore Perry 
crossed the Pacific and knocked so loudly at the 
door of Japan, that the people were obliged per- 
force to open it and "look see" what was going on 
outside. 

76 







Japanese doll with five wigs. With these wigs a doll shows five differ- 
ent stages of womanhood — from maidenhood to old age 



JAPANESE DOLLS 

Every minutia of their two costumes is carried 
out with absolute fidelity to the old court dress. 
The Emperor's tiny sword, Empress' court fan, 
with its long silken lassets, the cut of the garments, 
the material, the soft bamboo mats, every par- 
ticular is correct; their garbs are exact replicas of 
those worn by the imperial family for unnumbered 
ages. 

This pair I consider the gem of the collection, 
as they are difficult to obtain, and still more diffi- 
cult to preserve intact after possession. 

The Japanese paper dolls are innumerable; 
some have a round composition head like the 
Chinese; others are all of paper and most ingeni- 
ously made. Japanese children are in such close 
touch with nature that they are able to harness a 
pair of big beetles to a paper carriage with paste- 
board wheels. Into this they put their paper 
dolls who sit erect with silken reins in their hands. 



77 



CHAPTER VIII 

DOLLS POSSESSED OF SUPERNATURAL POWERS 

THERE is a variety of dolls particularly in 
Europe, representing saints and supposed 
to be possessed of the same miraculous 
powers attributed to their name saint. 
Though they are not, properly speaking, dolls, still 
they cannot be ignored in a book of this kind. 
Probably the best known and most widely wor- 
shiped one of this class is the Blessed Bambino 
at Rome. 

Its home is in the Ara Coela, the Altar of Heaven, 
the Franciscan Church of Rome, and is the point 
around which clusters an immense amount of 
tradition and veneration. 

It represents the infant Christ and history says 
it was carved from a tree that grew on the Mount 
of Olives, by a Franciscan monk who died before 
his work was completed. An angel, say some, and 
others St. Luke, completed the work. In any case 
the carvers were not skilled workmen, as the image 
is very crudely done; the wooden curls being very 
rigid and the face without expression. 

78 



DOLLS OF SUPERNATURAL POWERS 

The image wears a jeweled crown and over its 
silken garments there are attached real and imita- 
tion jewels so closely that it is with difficulty 
one can see the material. The little feet are hol- 
low and of gold, cinquecento workmanship. 

At Christmas and Epiphany the image is carried 
in procession up and down the church escorted 
by church dignitaries and a military band playing 
dance music. At last it is brought to the door, 
where at the top of the one hundred and twenty- 
four steps, it is held up for the kneeling crowd 
to worship and to be healed of their ills. After 
high mass the Bambino is placed in the treasury 
where it is kept under a glass case and only shown 
to visitors at certain times. 

Before 1870 it used to be taken in state carri- 
ages to the homes of people who were ill. Later 
for many years an Italian nobleman furnished the 
carriage for its transportation, but now that is 
given up for the Bambino is seldom taken from 
the church. If the image turns pale when brought 
to the patient, it is believed the invalid will die; 
if it is to live the face of the Bambino becomes 
quite pink. 

The Blessed Bambino was crowned in the Vati- 
can, May 2, 1891. Additional importance at- 
tached to it on January 8, 1894, when His Holi- 
ness, Pope Leo XIII. , granted indulgence to all 

79 



THE DOLL BOOK 

who would, with humble and contrite hearts, re- 
peat the following prayer once a day for one 
hundred days, the indulgence to be applicable to 
the dead prayed for as well as to the living: 

" Our most amiable Lord Jesus Christ who for us was born 
in a grotto, to deliver us from the darkness of sin, to draw us 
near unto thyself and to light in us all thy holy love. We adore 
thee as our Creator and Redeemer. We recognize thee as our 
Lord and King. As a tribute we bring to thee all the offerings 
of our poor hearts. Dear Jesus, our Lord and God, deign 
to accept this offering and in order that it may be worthy of thy 
grace, pardon us our sins, enlighten us; illumine us with thy holy 
fire that thou earnest to bring into the world. Illumine all this 
in our hearts. Let our souls in this manner become a perpetual 
sacrifice to thy honor. Do this that we may always act for thy 
greater glory here on earth in order that we may some day par- 
take of the infinite love of Heaven. Amen. " 

Tradition tells the story of a false Bambino 
having been palmed off upon the monks, which 
incident caused the Holy Fathers to discontinue 
the custom of lending their blessed child. The 
sick who need its services now must visit it in 
person, or get help by means of letters addressed 
to it. 

T. B. Aldrich, relates the legend in charming 
verse. Nina, the wife of a peasant living in Rome, 
grew ill and besought her husband to bring the 
blessed child to comfort her. 

"One morning two holy men 
From the convent came, and laid at her side 
The Bambino, Blessed Virgin; then 

80 




The Blessed Bambino at Rome. A figure that has played an important role 
in the Catholic Church for many hundreds of years 



DOLLS OF SUPERNATURAL POWERS 

Nina looked up and laughed, and wept 
And folded it close to her heart and slept. 

But she shrank with sudden strange new pain, 
And seemed to droop like a flower, the day 
The Capuchines came, with solemn tread, 
To carry the Miracle child away." 

Her one desire seemed to be to again possess 
the Bambino. She importuned her husband to 
get the long-haired Jew, Ben Raphaim, to carve 
a Bambino like the holy child. 

When he had done so, no one could have told 
the difference between the two, and Nina hid her 
image away and became again so ill that the Bam- 
bino from the convent was brought the second 
time. 

When the sacred infant was once more in her 
arms, she quickly recovered, and telling everyone 
she was well, bade them leave her. When alone 
with the Bambino she removed the clothing from 
the image. 

"Till the little figure, so gay before 
In its princely apparel, stood as bare 
As your ungloved hand. With tenderest care 
At her feet 'twixt blanket and counterpane 
She hid the babe." 

Then with trembling fingers Nina cunningly 
bedecked the image that Ben Raphaim had made, 
with the broidered gown and golden crown, and at 
the close of day sent for "the Capuchines who 

81 



THE DOLL BOOK 

came with solemn tread and carried the Bambino 
away." 

That night there swept down over Rome a 
storm that shook the earth to its center. In the 
midst of the tempest roar there came a sudden 
knocking at the convent door, and the convent 
bell began to toll as if moved by ghostly hands. 

No one dared open the door; at length one 
more bold than the others neared the portals when 
a flash of lightning revealed in a chink under the 
door "two dripping pink white toes." They flung 
down the chain. 

"And there in the night and the rain, 
Shivering, piteous and forlorn, 
And naked as ever it was born, 
On the threshold stood the Sainted Child." 

Never since that time has the Bambino been 
allowed to leave the church, not even to go to a 
prince's bed, unattended. 

The statue of the Virgin del Sagrario, in the 
Toledo Cathedral, has a reputation second to that 
of the Blessed Bambino in Rome. This effigy is 
carved from black wood resembling ebony, and 
it is said to have a most extensive wardrobe; in 
fact, there is a gown for each day in the year, and 
some of them are covered with gems; the jewels 
belonging to this statue are valued at several 
million dollars. 

82 



DOLLS OF SUPERNATURAL POWERS 

According to the newspapers there is in Balti- 
more, Maryland, U. S. A., a doll called "La Infan- 
tila," which is thought by her owner to possess 
supernatural powers that enable her to perform 
miracles in the way of healing disease. The doll 
occupies a room by herself in solitary grandeur, 
reclining on a canopied bed of solid silver. She 
is the possessor of rich jewels and costly costumes 
in which she appears from time to time; these are 
valued at thousands of dollars. These and a fine 
piano have been the votive offerings of those who 
have received benefits at her hands. The piano 
is played by her visitors as a part of the service 
of adoration. At stated intervals, certain fete days, 
Madam, her owner, gives receptions for the doll 
which are attended by guests from far and near. 

In the Jesuits' Chapel, Santa Fe, there is a won- 
derful effigy of Christ carved from hard wood and 
enameled to look like flesh. The young girl who 
takes the veil is taught to look upon the figure as 
representing her betrothal, and to some tempera- 
ments this doll lends a very real significance. 

San Pedro is the patron saint of Sante Fe, New 
Mexico; in one of the churches he is represented 
by a wooden figure to whom is attached wonderful 
powers. It is said that on the eve of the crucifixion 
the image shows signs of life, moves, breathes, 
sighs and trembles. For many years the aston- 

83 



THE DOLL BOOK 

ished populace discovered that on the day after 
the crucifixion, the key had changed hands. This 
they believed took place at cock-crow before the 
cathedral doors were flung open on Easter morn. 

In the recent excavation at the famous Palace of 
Momus in Crete, there were found three figures 
of faience that were made 1500 b. c. 

The most curious part of the costume of one is 
an oval apron padded over the hips. On the head 
is a high crowned hat and there are three serpents 
twined about her. She has two attendants who 
are dressed in a similar manner. 

In Asakusa Temple, Tokio, Japan, there is a 
large number of dolls, each possessed of certain 
supernatural power. In the museum connected 
with the temple there are about forty of these 
arranged in a gallery on the left. They are called 
"I-ki-nine quio," the living dolls. 

Some of the dolls have so natural an expression 
that one might easily believe that they were living 
pictures. The scenes represented relate to the 
miracles performed by Kwannon, the goddess of 
Mercy, whose kindness is inexhaustible. This 
goddess is herself seen in a thousand varieties of 
statues always with an excess of arms and hands 
that she may be able to reach forth and help all 
who call upon her. 

"Along the shrine path in the valley of Saas, 

84 



DOLLS OF SUPERNATURAL POWERS 

where the watershed marks the boundary line 
between Italy and Switzerland, there are figures 
in twelve shrines so old that the people do not 
know when they were made. Each one represents 
a scene from the New Testament. The groups of 
figures are crumbling to pieces, the soldiers of 
Pilate are dropping their swords and bucklers, 
the wise men of the East are falling prone in the 
dust. The robes of the Israelites are cracking with 
the rigor of an hundred Alpine winters, while the 
tinsel stars and broken skies are slowly burying 
the broken little manikins." Many of the more 
ignorant peasants, ascribe miraculous power to 
some of these, but in spite of this they do nothing 
to save them from the destructive hand of Time. 

The Santa Christo of St. Michaels, Azores, is a 
rudely fashioned image of wood robed in splendor 
and studded with jewels of great value; it holds a 
scepter, set with sparkling brilliants in its right 
hand and is altogether one mass of tinsel, light and 
color. 

It was the gift of a Pope to the nuns of the now 
long extinct Esperance Convent and has for cen- 
turies engrossed the veneration of a credulous 
multitude who credit it with a record of amazing 
miracles. 

The Santa is believed to have cured many a 
person of a fatal illness and to have revealed to 

85 



THE DOLL BOOK 

any number of maidens the secrets of their lovers 5 
hearts and to have frustrated sacrilegious attempts 
to abstract some of its valuables, by stepping out 
of its niche and placing itself against the door of 
the church. 

Near Lake Nyassa in Central Africa, the tribes 
use a queer doll symbol. Whenever a member of 
the tribe dies, a rude doll of wood and rags is made 
in which is hidden a small bark box. It is thought 
that the spirit of the dead man is caught by the 
witch doctor and shut up in the box. 

All the dead male dolls are deposited in a hut, 
where no one but members of the tribe are allowed 
to see them. An occasional missionary, with un- 
limited tact and persuasive powers, has been able 
now and again to get sight of them, and from them 
we have the story of the witch doll. 

In a collection owned by little ten-year-old Sallie 
Rice of New York, there is one doll credited with 
miraculous power. 

"It is the Christ child in papier mache — the 
little Bambino seen in Italian churches upon whose 
healing touch some Italian mothers depend to 
cure their sick babies. 

"This particular Bambino is of life size. It has 
real hair which clusters in dark ringlets about its 
chubby face. A halo of gold spreads its ray in 
semi-circular fashion at the back of the head. It 

86 



DOLLS OF SUPERNATURAL POWERS 

is garbed in an embroidered silk robe, decorated 
with gold spangled lace." 

The Black Virgin and Christ-child in the Ca- 
thedral of St. Jean on Fourriere Mount, at Lyons, 
France, belongs to the supernatural dolls. The 
chapel is full of votive offerings, crutches that have 
been cast aside by its help; arms, legs, hands and 
feet in miniature, symbols of other cures per- 
formed by the aid of this virgin. 



87 



CHAPTER IX 

SOME REMARKABLE COLLECTIONS 

IF it be true that the history of a nation may 
be traced through a collection of any one 
thing belonging to it, what history there 
must be in a collection of dolls which repre- 
sents and repeats customs, costumes and periods. 
The history of such a collection embraces certain 
of the arts and sciences; touches upon literature; 
reaches into the historic past and gilds each mani- 
kin with an air of reality. 

One of the largest and the most important col- 
lections in the world belongs to Her Highness, the 
Princess Mother of the Queen of Roumania. It 
is usually spoken of as belonging to the Queen 
herself, but the credit of it must be given to the 
Princess Mother. 

This collection numbers over a thousand dolls, 
thirteen hundred to be exact, many of them life- 
sized, dressed in national and historic costumes. 
In many cases they are arranged in groups show- 
ing the occupations of the people and often the 
process of some manufacture. 

88 




-3 



SOME REMARKABLE COLLECTIONS 

In 1899 this collection was exhibited in the 
palace of the Margrave at Karlrush, when it at- 
tracted great attention from all parts of the world, 
not only because of its size but also for its wonder- 
ful lessons in sociology. It reflected in a most 
interesting manner the mutability of fashion, and 
proved a pleasing commentary on the taste of past 
generations. 

The nucleus of this collection was a number of 
dolls showing with great exactness the fashions of 
former centuries, particularly those of the Black 
Forest region. As the costumes of many of these 
dolls had no counterpart even in the historic collec- 
tion of costumes, Her Highness conceived the idea 
of rescuing the dolls from an undeserved oblivion 
by exhibiting them and devoting the proceeds to 
charity. 

The idea grew and the collection, too, for all the 
crowned heads of Europe contributed one or more 
dolls in national costume until there is nowhere 
another so valuable a collection. Some of the 
life-sized figures wear costumes that had been 
carefully packed away for ages. There are dolls 
representing every European country, many of 
them dating from the fifteenth century with exact 
reproductions of the fashions of that period. 

At the exhibition the dolls were arranged in 
centuries, beginning with the daughter of an 

89 



THE DOLL BOOK 

Egyptian king of the year 1500 b. c, and ending 
with the new woman on a bicycle. Two beautiful 
dolls showed the costumes of Carmen Sylva, Queen 
of Roumania, at the ages of seventeen and at fifty. 

Many of the royal gifts were dolls representing 
the donors in early life. There were groups show- 
ing coronations, ceremonies, weddings, funerals, 
in fact, every phase of Roumanian life was repre- 
sented with exact fidelity and truth. 

One of the interesting features of Carmen 
Sylva's collection is the names of the royal givers 
of the dolls. Queen Victoria was a contributor, 
and her daughter, the Empress Frederick, and her 
grandson, Emperor William II, was a generous 
contributor, sending a miniature image of himself 
when he w T as a child. 

Queen Margherita of Italy sent one of the Pope's 
guards, a Roman contadina, and a Venetian gon- 
dolier, the garments of each convincingly accurate. 
Queen Wilhelmina of Holland, sent a number of 
picturesque Dutch dolls and the Queen of Servia 
contributed dolls wearing the Servian national 
costume. 

In addition to the royal and historic dolls, there 
are in the collection peasant dolls representing 
every European nation in every century. 

The peasants from the Black Forest were ar- 
ranged in groups, showing the various industries 

90 



SOME REMARKABLE COLLECTIONS 



of the country with the manikins at their work. 
This is undoubtedly the most valuable collection 
in the world. 

The collection of one hundred and thirty-two 
dolls which belonged to Queen Victoria, cannot 
compare in size or value with Carmen Sylva's 
collection, but the dolls of the English Queen are 
rich in sentiment and memories as they were 
dressed by her own hand, and they were all persons 
of note, most of whom she had seen at the opera or 
theater; the others were historical characters that 
had appealed to her. 

The Queen was very devoted to her dolls and 
played with them until she was fourteen years old, 
thus satisfying what Victor Hugo calls the most 
imperious instinct of female nature. . 

Frances H. Low, in a gorgeously illustrated vol- \f 
ume on Queen Victoria's dolls, gives many inter- 
esting particulars concerning the lonely Princess 
and her large family of dolls, particulars which 
were furnished by the Queen's private secretary, 
Sir Henry Ponsonby. He says: "The little 
favorites of the little Princess, were small wooden 
dolls which she could occupy herself with dressing 
and they had a house in which they could be 
placed. None of Her Majesty's children cared for 
dolls as she did; but then, they had girl compan- 
ions, which she never had. 

91 



THE DOLL BOOK 

"Miss Victoria Conroy (afterward Mrs. Ham- 
mer) came to see her once a week and occasionally 
others played with her, but with these exceptions 
she was left alone with the companionship of her 
dolls. The Queen usually dressed the dolls from 
some costume she saw either in the theater or 
private life. 

"There is indeed ample evidence in the care and 
attention lavished upon the dolls, of the immense 
importance with which they were regarded by 
their little royal mistress; and an additional and 
interesting proof of this is to be found in what one 
might call the 'dolls' archives.' These records are 
to be found in an ordinary copy book, now a little 
yellow with years, on the inside cover of which is 
written, in a childish, straggling, but determined 
y' handwriting: 'List of my dolls.' 

"Then follows in delicate feminine writing the 
name of the doll, by whom it was dressed and the 
character it represented, though this particular is 
sometimes omitted. When the doll represents an 
actress, the date and name are also given, by means 
of which one is enabled to determine the date of 
the dressing, which must have been between 1831 
and 1833, when," Sir Henry says, "the dolls were 
packed away. 

"Of the one hundred and thirty-two dolls pre- 
served, the Queen herself dressed no less than 

92 



SOME REMARKABLE COLLECTIONS 

thirty-two, in a few of which she was helped by the 
Baroness Lehzen, a fact that is scrupulously re- 
corded in the book ; and they deserve to be handed 
down to posterity as an example of the patience 
and ingenuity and exquisite handiwork of a twelve- 
year-old princess. 

"The dolls are of the most unpromising ma- 
terial and would be regarded with scorn by the 
average Board school-child of to-day, whose toys, 
thanks to modern philanthropists, are often of the 
most extravagant and expensive description. But 
if the pleasures of the imagination mean anything, 
if planning and creating and achieving are in 
themselves delightful to a child, and the cutting 
out and making of dolly's clothes especially, a 
joyous labor to a little girl, only second to nursing 
a live baby, then there is no doubt that the Prin- 
cess obtained more hours of pure happiness from 
her extensive wooden family than if it had been 
launched upon her ready dressed by the most 
expensive of Parisian modistes. 

"Whether expensive dolls were not obtainable 
at that period or whether the Princess preferred 
these droll little wooden creatures as more suitable 
for the representation of historical and theatrical 
personages, I know not; but the whole collection 
is made up of them and they certainly make 
admirable little puppets, being articulated at the 

93 



K* 



THE DOLL BOOK 

knees, thighs, joints, elbows and shoulders, and 
available for every kind of dramatic gesture and 
attitude. 

"It must be admitted that they are not aestheti- 
cally beautiful with their Dutch doll — not Dutch 
type — of face. Occasionally owing to the chin 
being a little more pointed, or a nose a little blunter, 
there is a slight variation of expression; but with 
the exception of height, which ranges from three 
to nine inches they are precisely the same. 

"There is the queerest mixture of infancy and 
matronliness in their little wooden faces, due to the 
combination of small sharp noses, and bright 
vermilion cheeks, consisting of a big dab of paint 
in one spot — with broad placid brows, over which, 
neatly parted on each temple, are painted elabo- 
rately elderly grayish curls. The remainder of the 
hair is coal black, and is relieved by a tiny yellow 
comb perched upon the back of the head. 

"The dolls dressed by Her Majesty are, for the 
most part, theatrical personages and Court ladies, 
and include also three maids — of whom there are 
only seven or eight in the whole collection, and a 
few little babies, tiny creatures made of rag, with 
painted wooden faces. 

"The workmanship in the frocks is simply 
exquisite, tiny ruffles are sewn with fairy stitches; 
wee pockets in aprons, it must be borne in mind, 

94 





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SOME REMARKABLE COLLECTIONS 

for dolls of five or six inches, are delicately finished 
off with minute bows — little handkerchiefs not 
more than half an inch square are embroidered 
with red silk initials, and have drawn borders; 
there are chatelaines of white and gold beads so 
small that they almost slip out of one's grasp when 
handling; and one is struck afresh by the deftness 
of finger and the unwearied patience that must 
have been possessed by the youthful fashioner." 

There are mothers with their babies and there 
is a "Mrs. Martha" who must have been a favorite 
of the young Princess. She is a buxom house- 
keeper with white lawn frock, full sleeves, and 
purple apron pinked all around. 

She wears a white lace cap adorned with many 
frills and tied under her small wooden chin with 
pink ribbons. She stands beside a home-made 
dressing table of cardboard covered with white 
brocade. Perhaps she was the head-housekeeper 
of the small establishment kept by the Duchess, 
and mayhap was wont surreptitiously to give the 
small child a bit of toffee or a sweet cake. 

The young Princess had a long board full of pegs 
into which the feet of these little dolls of hers fitted, 
and by the aid of these she rehearsed dramas, 
operas and pantomimes. 

These dolls were made in Holland and each one 
when it arrived in England bore a placard on its 

95 



THE DOLL BOOK 

back upon which was inscribed the following 
legend : 

"The children of Holland take pleasure in making 
What the children of England take pleasure in breaking." 

The young Queen of Holland has a large collec- 
tion of dolls which helped to make happy her 
youthful days, for she adored dolls. They were 
carefully labeled and set apart to become the play- 
mates of her children and children's children. 
There were soldiers, sailors, statesmen, court 
dignitaries, maids of honor, a charming fishwife 
from Scheveningen with her bright cloak and 
scoop bonnet, and others from different parts of 
the country, all of them in national costume. 

It is said that when her dolls displeased her, the 
youthful Queen would threaten to make them 
queens as the direst punishment which she could 
bestow upon them. Bows and salutations bored 
her more than anything else; so she contrived to 
make a certain number of obeisances another 
punishment. 

Two that are said to have particularly delighted 
young Wilhelmina's heart were governesses soberly 
clad in black silk; these are counterparts of the 
two that had charge of the young Queen's early 
education. 

Mile. Koenig of Paris has the distinction of 

96 



SOME REMARKABLE COLLECTIONS 

being at the head of the first doll museum ever 
organized. It is connected with the Musee Peda- 
gogique in the Rue Gay Lussac. Mile. Koenig's 
idea was that the customs and costumes of the 
country could be better taught by means of dolls 
than they could be by books and pictures. 

To this end she sent a request to all normal 
schools of France asking that each one send to the 
Musee Pedagogique a doll dressed in the costume 
of the district or in the native garb of some imme- 
diate colony. 

The request was most generously responded to, 
and when it became known that Mademoiselle 
wished dolls for her teaching, many of the foreign 
consuls residing in Paris, sent little models of the 
peasant dresses of their own countries. Naturally 
the collection is richest in French dolls, but other 
countries are very well represented. Miss Williams, 
founder of the Normal School Guild, presented a 
fine collection of English, Welsh and Scotch dolls. 
Count Robin Levetzan gave a handsome collection 
of Danish and Icelandic dolls. 

In "The Diary of an Idle Woman," we find the 
following anent Turkish dolls : "At a great Bazar 
at Constantinople there is a museum of ancient 
costumes among which is a collection of grotesque 
wooden dolls as large as life in the style of Mrs. 
Jarley's wax works, with flaming cheeks, protrud- 

97 



THE DOLL BOOK 

ing eyes, and the blackest of wigs. They represent 
all the officers of the court, the trades and pro- 
fessions of the capital — with not a woman among 
them." 

Walter Fewks has not only collected a large 
number of the katchinao or god-dolls of Tusayan 
Indians, but has published, through the Museum 
at Washington, a book giving their origin and 
characteristics so far as known. They form a part 
of the great ethnological collection in the Museum. 

In the Peabody Museum at Harvard, there is a 
collection of the Moki dolls, a part of the Mary 
Hemenway collection. Frank Cushing collected 
many of these images also. 

In the dead-letter division of the post office de- 
partment at Washington, there is a pathetic little 
collection rescued from misdirected or undirected 
mail matter. One is saddened by the thought of 
the tears that have been shed by reason of the 
non-arrival of these packages. Poor little things! 
that would have given so much happiness had they 
been so labeled as to reach the desired destination. 
Uncle Sam treats them well, but he counts only as 
a stepfather in this case, and what is a stepfather 
against one's very own mother! 

In St. Marks, Venice, there is an interesting col- 
lection of automatic dolls of great age. On special 
occasions they come out in procession, first an 

98 



SOME REMARKABLE COLLECTIONS 

angel with a trumpet, marches in front of a Ma- 
donna and blows the trumpet, and then passes on. 
After this comes the three Wise Men of the East, 
followed by three Moorish monarchs, all pausing 
before the Virgin and then bowing profoundly 
before disappearing. 

The great George Sand had an unlimited num- 
ber of dolls, and there was one in particular that 
remained her playmate for many years after she 
was a grown woman. 

Charlotte Bronte tells about the dolls she and 
her sisters played with. They were nearly all 
wooden dolls, soldiers, statesmen, and so forth, and 
the Bronte children used to make them act parts 
in little plays they themselves wrote. She says her 
own was the prettiest and most perfect of the lot 
and that she called him the Duke of Wellington. 

Mrs. Soleness in Ibsen's "Master Builder," had 
"nine lovely dolls," which were destroyed by fire 
and far more regretted than the family jewels, 
portraits and laces which went at the same time. 

In Charlotte Yonge's biography, we are told 
that she had a collection of sixteen dolls, ranging 
in size from a large wooden one to a tiny Dutch 
one, and that they used to be set on chairs along 
the nursery wall, and do their lessons when she 
had finished hers. The novelist's ungratified wish 
was for a wax doll and a china doll's service. 

99 



THE DOLL BOOK 

These were far more expensive then than now, 
and the young family had little money to spend on 
such luxuries for children. 

Madame Michelet writes in her "The Story of 
My Childhood": "My first doll I had to make; 
I desired an idol to adore. It must have a head 
with eyes to see, with ears to listen and a breast to 
hold a heart. All else was of little importance." 
Although in later years she had a goodly collection 
of dolls this one of home manufacture always held 
the supreme place in her heart. 

Eugene Field, who wrote the most adorable 
things for and about children, owned a fine collec- 
tion of dolls which were often made the mouth- 
piece of his quaint stories, affording him and his 
friends infinite amusement. 

Among famous "grown ups," who are still con- 
stant to the dolls of their childhood, we find the 
name of Ellen Terry, the most charming actress of 
her day. She has a choice collection which she 
carries about with her wherever she goes. These 
childhood puppets are most artistically dressed, 
with a quaintness that makes them fascinating to 
all beholders. There is but one boy doll in this 
doll family. 

Mrs. Josephine Daskam Bacon, the popular writer 
of children's stories, has a collection of dolls said 
to be one of the best in the world. The favorite 

100 




a 



SOME REMARKABLE COLLECTIONS 

has a special carriage and is often in evidence when 
Mrs. Bacon receives her friends. 

Madame Emma Eames, the famous singer, con- 
fesses to a weakness common to feminine humanity. 
Her doll-children, the playmates of her childhood, 
are even now her companions in many a quiet 
hour. 

Miss Bateman, the actress, and her professional 
sister, May Robson, have each a collection of dolls, 
friends of their childhood. 

Thomas Shields Clark, a New York artist, has 
a splendid collection of dolls for studio use. Among 
them are the Japanese Emperor and Empress 
sitting on a dais clad in the rich and beautiful 
garments of the ancient regime. 

A lady of Boston has a large collection which 
she uses for exhibition purposes. 

In the Museum at Amsterdam is a collection of 
figures representing long gone costumes and cus- 
toms. 

Clyde Fitch, the successful playwright, has a 
collection of dolls which he uses to portray char- 
acters in his plays. 

A collection of rare and ancient dolls belongs to 
Miss Brewer of Longmeadow, Massachusetts. It 
is the result of years of travel and represents many 
countries and strange customs. A rare and most 
interesting one is a Lenten doll from Italy. 

101 



THE DOLL BOOK 

This, as is evident from its name, possesses a 
semi-religious character; on Ash Wednesday, a 
doll dressed entirely in black, holding a distaff in 
one hand, is hung out of one of the upper windows 
of some Italian houses. By its side is hung an 
orange into which five black feathers and one white 
one are stuck. 

Early every Saturday morning a black feather 
is taken out, but the white feather remains until 
Easter when it is withdrawn. Then the doll is 
taken in and put away carefully until next lenten 
season arrives. 

A curious native doll in the collection is a "sang" 
root from the Carolina mountains. The head, 
hands and feet are made of dried apples; her face 
is brown and wrinkled, having the appearance of 
great age; she is in the act of dipping snuff, having 
the stick in her mouth and snuff box in her hand. 

There are two coolie women from Trinidad; one 
has a ring in the nose to show that she is engaged 
and the other bears the henna mark on top of the 
head which denotes the wife. 

Many of Miss Brewer's dolls are veritable 
antiques; some of them natives; others imported 
ones which have stood the storm and stress of a 
long ocean voyage in addition to the wear and tear 
that would naturally result from being the play- 
things of three or four generations. 

102 



SOME REMARKABLE COLLECTIONS 

Miss Annie Fields Alden has a fine collection 
of dolls of which she wrote most entertainingly in 
The Ladies' Home Journal a few years ago. The 
gem of her collection and the germ also, is a doll 
from Martinique, the gift of Lafcadio Hearn. 

"The doll is made of leather and stands eleven 
inches high and is golden brown in color. It is 
dressed in gay chintz and wears a turban of the 
same material upon its head. Around the neck 
are rows of glittering beads and in its ears imposing 
earrings, and it carries itself with indescribable 
spirit." 

Miss Fields has also one of the mandrake root 
dolls which is absurdly like a man with a baby in 
his arms. A crusader, a Spanish monk from 
Seville, Garibaldi, and St. Francis of Assisi are 
among the celebrities in the collection. 

Miss Fields tells about showing her dolls to 
Helen Keller, the wonderful girl whose only revela- 
tion of the world about her comes through the 
sense of touch. 

Miss Keller said: "Do not tell me about them 
until I can find out how much they say to me 
themselves in this way." 

She took the Indian doll into her sensitive hands, 
felt of it carefully, then said: "I should say that 
this represents an Indian but for one thing; it has 
cheeks as round as an apple, while the Indians 

103 



THE DOLL BOOK 

have angular faces with high cheek bones." But 
then she added: "This may be a bad specimen." 

She has a wooden doll in a bed, made by a boy 
belonging to the White Chapel Mission, London, 
that is unique, and a pair of black silk dolls from 
Venezuela that are perfect negroes. 

In the red room of the White House there is 
a collection of Japanese wax dolls presented a few 
years ago by Madame Takahira. There are 
about thirty of these little persons, and they stand 
in solemn state in an inlaid glass and ebony cabi- 
net. The nursemaids and house servants are 
especially gorgeous, and the glory of the police- 
men of Japan, as shown by the dolls, puts even 
the marine corps of the United States in the shade. 

Mr. Edward Lovett of Croydon, England, has a 
fine collection of dolls which he uses for lecture 
purposes. He possesses some very rare specimens 
and his collection is very valuable. The one most 
interesting, in a way, is a doll that was brought 
home by a steward who went out on the search 
expedition for Sir John Franklin and his men. 
This doll is an Eskimo from Point Barrow, and 
has a long and eventful history. 

Mrs. Max Heinrich of La Jolla, California, has 
a unique collection of dolls. One, her favorite, is 
called "Olive," and is said to be the owner's con- 
stant companion. She is very smartly dressed 

104 




■43 



SOME REMARKABLE COLLECTIONS 

and the hair on her head once grew on the head 
of that most adorable actress, Ellen Terry. Natu- 
rally this would make Olive more precious than 
the others or any ordinary dolls. 

These dolls have many costumes and in their 
day play many parts ; they are the source of much 
pleasure and amusement to all of Madam's visitors. 

Among the numerous collections of dolls owned 
by royalty, the one belonging to the Princess 
Clementine of Belgium is not to be overlooked. , It 
has been used for exhibition purposes for various 
charity organizations, and is very well known. 
The oldest dolls of the collection, it is said, were 
found in the ruins of Babylon; next are some 
Roman dolls of ivory, wax and clay, then several 
Greek dolls; the latter, though less ancient, are 
more valuable than the Roman, as there are few ex- 
amples of these extant; they represent gods, heroes 
and common mortals. One of the most interesting 
dolls in the collection is a Fingo native doll from the 
Orange Free State, which, though rudely carved, 
plays an important role in its country. 

Other interesting items in the Princess' collec- 
tion are the dolls from Greenland, from Assam, 
British India, dolls of the old French Court, a 
Bartholomew baby, and some very rare North and 
South American Indian dolls. From the stand- 
point of variety the collection is most unique. 

105 



CHAPTER X 

DOLLS OF THE NATIVITY 

IN the Middle Ages religious plays were per- 
formed with marionettes in the churches of 
Europe, dolls being made to represent saints 
and even divine personages. Some of them 
were quite elaborate, and in one play, the manikins 
took the parts of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the Three 
Wise Men, angels, shepherds, and even the animals 
in the stable where Christ was born. In fact, this 
was the earliest type of Passion play, out of which 
has been evolved the famous drama given once in 
ten years at Oberammergau. 

Something of the kind still remains in the per- 
sepio of Italy which is a representation with scenery 
and figures of the birth of Christ and other Bible 
stories. 

In all Catholic countries there is always some 
scene of the Nativity arranged at Christmas. Fre- 
quently the exhibition remains open to the public 
for weeks, and crowds of people throng the churches 
at all hours. 

106 



DOLLS OF THE NATIVITY 

It is said that St. Francis of Assisi arranged the 
first one and invented the cradle for that purpose. 
It was his object to place before the common peo- 
ple a realistic picture of the manger in Bethlehem 
with accurate surroundings and with the actors in 
the great drama dressed in the costumes of the 
period. 

In olden times (and in some cases nowadays) 
these figures were made of composition. They 
are very lifelike and very natural, from eight 
to ten inches high and are regarded with super- 
stitious awe by the ignorant. In some the Christ- 
child lies naked in a miniature manger; in 
others, where the Oriental idea is more strictly 
adhered to, the child wears a wadded cap, tied 
round with a kerchief turban-wise and a striped 
gown — in Jerusalem called a ghuzleyhr — wound 
about with strips of cloth or ribbon. The babies 
of Southern Europe are swathed about in this 
fashion. 

When a child is laid in a cradle, ribbons are at- 
tached to it and women sometimes quarrel as to 
who shall have the honor of pulling them and 
rocking the holy child. 

The children of royalty in all Latin countries 
have exhibitions of this kind. A particularly fine 
one was arranged for the present king of Spain, 
when he was quite young, and was on exhibition 

107 



THE DOLL BOOK 

for some time in Madrid. These exhibitions are 
called Nacieaments in Spain. 

European people of large means often have an 
exhibition of this kind arranged in their own 
houses at Christmas and the whole scene, what- 
ever it may be, is carried out with great fidelity 
regardless of expense. 

In some of the museums in Southern Europe 
one sees these figures arranged to represent various 
other Bible pictures. In the neighborhood of 
Naples there is in a small museum a representation 
containing two or three hundred figures of the six- 
teenth and seventeenth centuries. Single figures 
are occasionally found in antique shops, for which 
fabulous prices are asked as having served in the 
nativity exhibition; they are supposed to have 
become possessed of occult or supernatural power. 

In the museum in Florence there is an especially 
fine persepio. One is particularly struck by the 
classical helmets worn by the servants of the three 
kings. The traditions of centuries are retained and 
the scene is pictured with amazing fidelity. 

An interesting Christmas custom in Mexico in 
which figures of the Christ-child, the wise men and 
others take part, is called the posada, and is un- 
doubtedly of the same origin as the persepio, differ- 
ing in minor detail only from the Nacieaments of 
Spain. 

108 



DOLLS OF THE NATIVITY 

In certain devout Roman Catholic families there 
are figures of various materials representing the 
holy family, the wise men of the East and several 
attendants, which have been owned and used at 
the holiday season for generations. 

In cold countries, the scene is usually laid in a 
thatched stable, white with snow and icicles, with 
an ox and an ass bending over the Divine Child 
warming him with their breath. In warmer cli- 
mates, the creche is in the open air, with sunny 
mountains or wild stretches of country for a setting. 

Among all the Christmas mangers of the past, 
depicting the setting and the personages of the 
Nativity, the arrival of the shepherds and the Magi 
of Bethlehem — that of Charles III. of Bourbon, 
King of Naples, arranged in 1760, is the most 
beautiful one in existence. It is in an historical 
museum near Naples, and although there is not 
now so great a crowd about it as to need a double 
guard, as was necessary when it was first exhibited, 
still it is the object of great interest. 

The setting is forty feet wide, twenty-five feet 
deep, and fifteen feet high; there are five hundred 
figures of people, two hundred animals all made of 
finely carved wood, wax and costly fabrics. The 
Bambino lies in the Virgin's lap; she is seated on 
the ruins of a temple to Apollo. The dolls are 
nine inches tall, and fashioned with consummate 

109 



THE DOLL BOOK 

art. Celebrated artists carved the figures, and the 
Queen, herself, dressed them. 

The following description of a posada in Mexico 
is the best I have ever seen. It appeared in a 
Mexican newspaper 

"The posadas are called jornadas in some parts 
of Mexico, and both words have a peculiar signifi- 
cance, posada referring to the lodging, and Jor- 
nada to the day's journey. The legend goes that 
Joseph and Mary traveled from Nazareth to 
Bethlehem in nine days, and that each night they 
had to beg their lodging, or posada. 

"The journey of these two humble subjects of 
the Roman empire to the town of their legal resi- 
dence, Bethlehem, or Belen, as it is called in 
Spanish, for the taking of the census as ordered 
by Augustus Caesar, is thus commemorated nightly 
in all good Mexican homes, from December 16th 
to 24th, the feasts terminating on Christmas Eve 
with all ceremony and pomp. 

"Several families usually arrange to hold a 
posada together, and each family entertains the 
others on one of the nights of the no vena. The 
people assemble at a little after eight o'clock in 
the appointed house, and each member of the 
party is provided with a candle, the servants and 
retainers of the household being included in the 
party on these occasions. A procession is formed 

110 



DOLLS OF THE NATIVITY 

headed by two pilgrims, represented by little stat- 
uettes, Joseph on foot and Mary mounted on an 
ass, or burro, which Joseph leads. Above the 
figures hovers another, that of an angel. The 
figures are usually rude, like those sold in the 
puestos, but the details of the Virgin's face, Joseph's 
beard, and the patient gray burro are carried out 
faithfully, although the personal equation of the 
sculptor enters largely into the makeup. The pair 
are represented as Mexicans of the lower class, not 
far off from the truth of the lowly origin of the holy 
couple. Mary is gaudily dressed, in blue satin or 
some equally rich robe, though often her hand- 
some garments are not given her until the Noche 
Buena. 

"The procession, which is headed by those who 
carry the figures of Joseph and Mary, marches 
down the corridor of the house, with a choir of 
ladies and girls singing the Virgin's litany of 
Loretto. This finished, a portion of the party 
enters the drawing room of the house and acts as 
its owner in the dialogue with the pilgrims outside. 
The knock at the door, and the appeal for a night's 
lodging is met with a gruff reply and an order to be 
gone. But the pilgrims persist, in a fascinating 
old chant, like the litany of a mediaeval church, and 
finally the obdurate householder relents, and the 
pair enter. They are given quarters in a corner 

111 



THE DOLL BOOK 

of the room where a quaint service is held, in which 
all present kneel before the figures, which rest on 
an improvised altar, amid candles and tinsel and 
toys, and sing more bits of the quaint chant, with 
prayers by a priest, if one is present. 

"The following is a sample of the mediaeval 
chant, with its translations: 

"Oh peregrina agraciada, 
Oh purisima Maria, 
Yo te ofrezco el alma mia, 
Para que tengais posada. 

"O gracious pilgrim, 

purest Mary, 

1 offer thee my soul 
To be thy refuge. 

"The religious part of the evening ends with this 
little service before the shrine. Its close is a 
signal for the youngsters, and with an assurance 
born of tradition they demand dulcies, and a colla- 
tion is passed, with French candies in little pottery 
toys, seen in such numbers in the puestos. These 
toys are afterwards kept as souvenirs. 

"The pinata follows at once, and is, indeed, 
come to be one of the chief features of the evening. 
This pinata is nothing more than one of the big 
earthenware water jars or ollas (if it is cracked it 
will break the more easily), decorated with tissue 
paper, tinsel, and in the handsomer ones, enveloped 

112 



DOLLS OF THE NATIVITY 

in the great papier mache figures of angels, men 
and women of all types and races. The pinata is 
filled with presents of various sorts, bits of sugar 
cane, clay figures and dolls, and in many cases with 
presents of silver and mechanical toys of value. 

"The pinata is hung up, either in the middle of 
the room or in a doorway, and each member of the 
party, large and small, given a chance to break it 
with three blows. At first, however, the person 
who is given the short club with which the blows 
are struck is blindfolded and turned around three 
times, leaving him in a condition which adds to the 
jollity of the occasion, as those in the room have 
sometimes to exercise some agility in avoiding 
strong blows meant to shatter the pinata, and 
which may cause damage to sundry craniums. 

"Once the pinata is broken, the whole company, 
great and small, joins in the scramble for the pres- 
ents which tumble to the floor, gathering all possi- 
ble together, the most agile securing the best and 
most prizes. 

"In the later posadas, when the fun needs an 
added zest, dancing is indulged in, and presents 
given to various of the guests, by which their 
partners are found, after the fashion of a cotillion. 

"On Christmas eve, or the Noche Buena, the 
service and the fun both exceed those of all the 
other nights. The service of asking for lodging is 

113 



THE DOLL BOOK 

much the same, except that this time, which marks 
the anniversary of the arrival of Joseph and Mary 
in Bethlehem, they are lodged in a stable, repre- 
sented in one corner of the drawing room. The 
special ceremony of the evening waits until mid- 
night, while the time is passed in dancing. 

"Fifteen minutes before the midnight hour 
strikes, the exercises of the Noche Buena begin, 
with the singing of the litany of the Nino Dios. 
This lasts ten minutes, and the other five minutes 
are given to the singing of the Rorro, for the sooth- 
ing of the infant Jesus. This Rorro is a beautiful 
typical epitome of the songs of Mexican mothers 
to their children. 

"At twelve o'clock the ceremony of the laying 
of the Nino Dios in His manger takes place. A 
curtain is drawn from a miniature representation 
of the scene described in the New Testament, dis- 
closing the stable, with Mary and Joseph, and with 
a brilliant star marking the spot where the young 
Christ is to lie. In the background are asses, horses 
and cattle. 

"Two persons, a man and a woman, are chosen 
to place the Child in His manger cradle, and by 
this act, stand sponsors for Him, and become com- 
padres with the host, whose property the figure is. 
With this laying of the child in His cradle the cere- 
mony of the nativity is completed." 

114 



CHAPTER XI 

MY COLLECTION 

jk N East Indian doll, whose ancestor might 
/% easily have been a Buddha, belongs to 
.X. m the "tilt-up" family. She is more 
heavily loaded and made of more sub- 
stantial material than my Chinese specimens, but 
is equally true to her type. She is tattooed on 
her chin, and wears an elaborate nose ornament 
and very massive earrings. Her sarong is grace- 
fully arranged to show one shoulder. Her face 
is yellow and so is a large portion of her dress, 
mingled with red and green. She had been used 
as a door-block for several years before she came 
into my possession, and shows the wear and tear 
of her position somewhat, and yet I consider her 
one of my treasures. 

My Parsee rag doll would make any doll col- 
lector green with envy. She is about one foot high 
and is made entirely of rag. The long straight 
body is about two inches in circumference; appar- 
ently a few extra windings shaped the head which 

115 



THE DOLL BOOK 

is covered with a piece of grass cloth. The nose 
is a little knob, ingeniously set in the middle of the 
face; eyes and brows are worked in with black 
cotton, while a thread of red does duty for a 
mouth. A smaller roll of rags is fastened to the 
body directly under the chin, making the arms 
stand out like the arms of a cross. A similar roll 
is fastened to the lower end of the body and this 
is supposed to answer for feet; but one smiles to 
see feet, without any legs or ankles, growing out of 
the trunk. This reminds one of those fabled stags 
we read of, creatures that have no middle joints to 
their legs — only the doll is minus legs, as well as 
middle joints; if she ever walked, it must have 
been in the same graceful manner that the fire 
screen or clothes-horse would walk were they so 
minded. The body and feet are wound with 
strips of bright yellow cotton. The yellow gauze 
sarong is edged with a band of silver braid, and 
the curious lady wears big silver earrings and a 
gold bracelet on her exposed arm. 

Two queer little squat, jointed pith dolls were 
brought to me by that indefatigable traveler, 
Walter Del Mar, who bought them in a shop on 
the steps of the Shore Dragon Pagoda, Rangoon. 
They are grotesquely painted and are guiltless even 
of a fig leaf, but then, the climate of Burmah does 
not make any demands in that direction. 

116 



MY COLLECTION 

Persian children have no dolls except very ugly 
rag ones; the dresses, which represent the indoor 
costumes of women, will not come off. The wild 
delight of a Persian child when first she saw a 
European doll with her entire wardrobe packed 
in a trunk, was something to remember and im- 
possible to describe. 

She was sure the talking doll was alive, and it 
was days before she could be persuaded that a 
creature that could say "Papa," and "Mamma," 
and go to sleep and wake up, was not as real as 
she herself was. 

She cast aside all her native dolls and for weeks 
would have none of them; she seemed to live, 
move and have her being only with that doll. At 
last, strangely enough, she became weary of it 
and returned to the ugly native dolls, discarding 
the "European beauty," as she had called the new 
one. Another instance of the call of the wild. 

A Persian woman and her servant, the loot of a 
returned missionary, are the crudest rag dolls I 
have ever seen. The woman's full Turkish trous- 
ers are made continuous, so that they cover her 
feet like night-dresses children sometimes wear. 

Her waist is fastened with a button as big as a 
dinner plate, and her upper and lower garments 
have not actually missed connection, but they 
make it in such a disconnected way that one isn't 

117 



THE DOLL BOOK 

sure that they will not eventually miss it alto- 
gether. 

A wisp of hair stands almost upright over her 
forehead and features, which are all in the upper 
part of her face; bracelets and jewels adorn her 
person; her fingers are so blunt and unshaped 
that they look as if they had been cut off at the 
first joint. 

The servant is as crude, but far more gorgeous 
than his mistress. His short skirt, reaching not 
more than half way to his knees, is very full, and 
reveals a pair of legs so swathed in rags that they 
look like the clumsy results of the beginner's "first 
aid to the injured." The tips of his fingers have 
been also amputated, and he wears a figured hand- 
kerchief, pinned shawl-wise over his head. 

Another Persian woman has very voluminous 
skirts and hands and feet that have been chopped 
off short. The latter are encased in black stocking 
legs that look like bags. The head is swathed in 
black lace and she seems altogether in "a bunch." 

My Siamese boy is modern; his body is made of 
composition and when he arrived in New York 
his face was smashed flat. I took him to the doll 
hospital and the best they could do was the present 
head, which is several shades lighter than his 
hands. His gown is made of silk and his whole 
costume is magnificent with gold lace. 

118 



MY COLLECTION 

Two Turkish dolls I have are characteristic. 
One wears an outdoor dress and the other a house 
dress, though she has on the pearl-bedecked tur- 
ban that is sometimes worn with the face veil. 
She is loaded with piasters and would make a rich 
bride. 

The outdoor dress of all Mohammedan women 
is admirably contrived to cover but not conceal the 
woman; wearing the ferugia and yashmak one 
might defy recognition by her own husband. The 
yashmak, the long, narrow strip of black or white 
which covers the lower part of the face and reaches 
almost to the hem of the dress, is not much worn 
by the women of Islam to-day. The more decora- 
tive and less cumbersome face veil, one square of 
which is folded turban-wise about the head, while 
the other conceals the mouth and chin, is more 
seen both in Egypt and Turkey. The full baggy 
trousers and short jacket are still worn in some of 
the Turkish harems, but a loose white linen gar- 
ment is more common in Egypt. 

My Sudanese doll is literally what Kipling says 
some women are: "A rag, and a bone and a hank 
of hair," only in this case the bone happens to 
be a piece of bamboo. She was the beloved play- 
thing of a Sudanese child, up the Nile, and even 
now reeks with the smell of grease and dirt. At 
first, the little brown girl, guiltless of clothing in 

119 



THE DOLL BOOK 

any shape, refused to part with her doll, but the 
sight of a few silver piasters was too much for her, 
and she gave this dolly up, reluctantly, it must be 
confessed. I must also confess to some reluctance 
in taking the doll, but the collector's greed is 
stronger than shame or pity. 

The Syrian woman's face veil is hung with gold 
coins. This is the fortune of the woman, her 
dower, so to speak. From the time of her birth 
to her wedding day, every coin that comes into a 
woman's possession is added to her wedding por- 
tion. 

Through the Druse doll we get a glimpse of a 
very curious and interesting people. The Druses 
who live on Mount Lebanon belong to a religious 
sect of which very little is known. 

The women are noted for their beauty and the 
peculiar costumes the married ones wear. The 
bodice is open and exposes the throat and a por- 
tion of the breast. 

The crowning point is the tantour and veil which 
is worn by all married women. The tantour is a 
long slim horn, with the larger end fastened securely 
to the woman's h#ir. This is bent to a consider- 
able angle and then a long veil is thrown over it, 
though not so as to cover the doll's face; it floats 
gracefully behind. 

The tantour the women wear is from one foot to 

120 




Lebanon doll. A hybrid, so to speak, as she was made in Europe, 
while her clothes came from a Lebanon mission 



MY COLLECTION 

a foot and a half high and is made of metal or 
bamboo. This is put onto the bride on her wed- 
ding day and sometimes it is not removed until 
her death. One refuses to imagine the condition 
of the woman's head and the torture she must 
endure. 

The Lebanon doll is a hybrid; still, aside from 
her flaxen hair and blue eyes, she is true to the 
type. Mrs. Elizabeth Custer, widow of General 
George A. Custer, bought the clothing at a mission 
in Lebanon and put it on a European doll when 
she returned home. The doll is swathed in what 
is called a ghuzleyrh, which is said to be a replica 
of the swaddling clothes which the Christ-child 
wore. There are only a few people, even among 
the natives, who know how to make the tiny cap 
it wears, and Mrs. Custer considered herself fortu- 
nate to be able, after much bargaining and almost 
supplication, to secure one. 

Some of the dolls of Siam are of baked mud and 
wear no clothes. Others are of stuffed cotton, 
something like our rag dolls and there are still 
others made of wood. There are father and 
mother dolls dressed in strips of cloth wound 
round their bodies. The small dolls in my col- 
lection are dressed in the same fashion. Girls 
kiss their dolls by touching noses and drawing in 
their breath each time. I have seen in the shops, 

121 



THE DOLL BOOK 

where one finds beautiful ivory furniture for doll 
houses, some beautiful specimens of doll temples. 

A pair of dolls from India were the property 
of a missionary in Illinois. The woman who 
owned them knew nothing about them and I have 
not been able to discover much. I call them 
sitting-down dolls, as their bodies are so shaped 
that they cannot stand upright. 

They have seams down the center of their faces 
and their eyes reach so far around that they might 
almost see behind themselves. Their garments 
are of brocaded velvet, gorgeous with gold braid. 
The man wears a fierce mustache, and both have 
most unhappy faces. 



122 



CHAPTER XII 

my collection (continued) 

IN Spain, the most mediaeval of all countries, 
there still exists a custom that has obtained 
for hundreds of years, that of marking the 
graves of children with toys and dolls. Per- 
haps I should say the resting place of dead chil- 
dren, for few Spaniards are put into graves as we 
understand the word. 

They are buried in vaults built above ground, 
like those in the old cemeteries in New Orleans, 
and these vaults are divided and subdivided into 
what in common parlance are called "ovens." At 
these shrines may be seen dolls and playthings, 
broken and battered almost beyond recognition, 
which the sorrowing parents have placed near the 
bodies of their beloved children. The mute pathos 
with which they meet the eye, is almost heart- 
breaking. 

Miss Bates, in her splendid book on Spain, tells 
of a song and play with dolls that is amusing. 
She says: "The baby girls have a song of their 

123 



THE DOLL BOOK 

own, which, as a blending of doll play, gymnastics, 
music, mathematics and religion, leaves little to 
be desired. 

The children with their dolls in their arms sing: 



V 



"Oh, I have a dolly and she is dressed in blue, 
With a fluff of satin on her milk white shoe, 
And a lace mantilla to make my dolly gay, 
When I take her dancing, this way, this way, this way." 
(Dances dolly in time to music.) 



The second stanza deals with mathematics and 
runs as follows: 

"2 and 2 are 4, 4 and 2 are 6, 
6 and 2 are 8, and 8 is 16. 
And 8 is 24 and 8 is 32; 
Thirty- two, thirty- two 
Blessed souls I kneel to you — " 
{Girl and dolly kneel.) 

"When she goes out walking in her mantilla shawl, 
My Andalusian dolly is quite the queen of all. 
Gypsies, dukes and candy men bow down in a row, 
While my dolly fans herself so and so and so." 

(Fans dolly to music.) 

"2 and 2 are 4; 4 and 2 are 6, 
6 and 2 are 8 and 8 is 16. 
And 8 is 24, and 8 is 24 
Blessed souls I rise once more." 

The most representative Spanish doll I own, I 
brought from the Canary Islands. She wears the 
red petticoat which is common to the peasant class 
and which always peeps out from underneath the 
lifted dress. 

124 




Spanish doll from Salonica. She shows the Spanish type and 
fondness for gay colors 



MY COLLECTION 

She wears what all the women of the Islands wear, 
and what I have never seen in any other Spanish 
country, and that is a white mantilla. Instead of 
looking like so many black crows, as the women 
of Spain and Mexico do, the natives of Las Palmas 
and Teneriffe remind one of the flock of white 
pigeons. The mantilla is made invariably of soft 
white wool, like cashmere, and all are cut after the 
same pattern. 

Two dolls from Spain have not the merit of hav- 
ing Spanish clothes. A sailor suit and an ordinary 
European walking dress do not differentiate them 
from the hordes of dolls made for export. 

A grotesquely amusing Mexican doll is one whose 
dark body is made of red-brown satin and whose 
hair is real wool. He represents a runner who 
carries dispatches and light-weight parcels tre- 
mendous distances in a day. His legs are three 
times as long as those of an ordinary doll and his 
entire costume consists of a loin cloth and a neck- 
lace of colored beads. He comes from the province 
of Chihuahua, where his ancestors have been run- 
ners for centuries. He belongs to the "Tarama- 
haras," who are the direct descendants of those 
who ran with messages and carried fish for the 
Montezumas. In recognition of their efficiency, 
the Mexican government made them carriers of 
its messages. Some of them develop wonderful 

125 



THE DOLL BOOK 

speed; live almost entirely nude and in the open 
air. The simple life without question. 

The primates that are filled with sweets and hung 
on the Mexican Christmas trees, and the figures of 
Judas filled with gunpowder and a slow fuse that 
are hung as targets across the streets at Easter, are 
not dolls really, yet they deserve passing mention. 

The primates are made of paper, very bulging 
in the center, where quantities of sweets are placed. 
These are fastened to a long swaying branch that 
is used instead of a Christmas tree. When the 
proper time arrives some one strikes the dolls with 
a long stick and the sweets fall out and thereupon 
ensues a general scramble, for each one desires to 
have his share, and when the festivities are over, 
the dolls are given to the children. 

The figures of Judas are made of paper, cloth 
and whalebone, and filled with powder or crackers 
and the fuse so arranged that the explosion shall 
take place at a certain time. These effigies are 
suspended from window to window and are free 
targets for all the populace, whose great delight 
it is to fire a missile at them, thus at this day 
punishing Iscariot for his treachery. 

I have several rag figures made in Mexico that 
are marvels of workmanship. The fingers and toes 
are microscopic, the details of the dress are car- 
ried out scrupulously. Any day you may see the 

126 



MY COLLECTION 

counterparts of my vegetable sellers, for instance, 
as they ply their trade up and down the streets. 
The entire figures are made of rags and the faces 
are painted with rare fidelity. 

The Mexicans are particularly clever in making 
figures of clay. I have a whole army of them 
showing every profession and occupation common 
to the country. There are also old men about the 
streets who will make you "while you wait," a 
statuette of yourself, and a good likeness, too. 



127 



CHAPTER XIII 

my collection (continued) 

MY lace-maker from Le Puy was dressed 
by one of the lace-makers, herself, who 
reproduced her own costume exactly. 
She is seated in a chair with her lace 
cushion on her lap, and the cushion, which is hol- 
low and padded on the outside, is fixed in a stand 
that is perfectly fascinating. 

Across the front there is a photographic view 
of the town of Le Puy and on the sides pictures of 
two pretty lace-makers. The hollow cushion is 
used as a storehouse for the finished work. There 
is an inch or two of torchon lace already worked 
on the cushion, and the dozen or more bobbins are 
all filled and ready for work. 

The doll wears a little brown frock, black apron 
and a small shawl folded over her shoulders. The 
cap is muslin with lace frill and a big bow of 
ribbon in front. Like all her kind, she is fond of 
gewgaws and wears a long chain and other jewelry. 
The lace-makers congregate together in fine 

128 



MY COLLECTION 

weather and sometimes their tongues run a race 
with their work. The mothers bring their babies 
and cradle and tend the little ones as they throw 
their bobbins about. The cradles are of wood, and 
resemble little boats ; along the sides are enormous 
buttons of wood, by means of which the child is 
laced into the cradle by bands that cross from one 
side to the other. The lacing-band is so arranged 
that there is a loop for the mother's foot, thus giving 
her a chance to rock the child when necessary. 

In the sixteenth century there was an ancient 
lace factory in Le Puy; the lace was then, as now, 
fine, solid and very durable. It was in connection 
with the factory that the Jesuit Father, St. Francis 
Regis, who is considered the patron saint of lace- 
makers, earned his canonization. Sumptuary edicts 
were published by the Seneschal of Le Puy, which 
threatened to annihilate the lace-makers. Father 
Regis not only consoled the sufferers in their 
poverty, but went to Toulouse and obtained a 
revocation of the edicts. To this day, the lace- 
makers speak his name with reverence, and pray 
to him to help them in time of trouble. 

The doll from Aries wears the Arlesian costume 
complete, the distinguishing mark of which is the 
big black- velvet bow on the head. She is a dainty 
little lady and has a face with a good deal of French 
expression. 

129 



THE DOLL BOOK 

The peasant women from the neighborhood of 
Cannes on the Riviera are typical of their class and 
country; one wears wooden sabots, but the feet 
of the other are encased in the modern leather 
slipper with big steel buckles. Both wear aprons 
and one has the skirt of her dress caught up in the 
back to keep it clean. The hat of one is straw, 
with pretty trimmings, while the other wears a 
bonnet over her curly hair, loaded with lace and 
ribbons. 

A French rag doll with composition head has 
stockings that do not match and all her clothes 
are fastened on with paste or glue. She is comi- 
cally ugly. 

The French soldier is a grand affair, although — 
like the real ones — he seems undersized. His uni- 
form is correct and his face has expression, al- 
though one might question the beauty of it. 

A plaster figure of an old French grenadier wears 
the uniform of the first Napoleon and is every inch 
a soldier. 

The men and women who come into Nice 
from the surrounding country with milk and eggs 
are garbed in the most picturesque of costumes. 
The women wear short skirts, large aprons that 
nearly cover them, with long strings tied in a big 
bow in front. A bright colored shawl is folded 
across the breast and tucked into the belt. The 

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MY COLLECTION 

hair is protected by a close cap with some orna- 
mentation. The woman doll carries a pail of milk 
in each hand. 

The man doll carries a basket of eggs and a pail 
of milk; he wears a peaked woolen cap, a thick 
woolen jacket without sleeves. He has a beard 
and mustache and his feet and legs are clothed 
in gay-colored stockings and shoes with enormous 
bows. 

The costume of the French shepherd approaches 
more nearly that of the ordinary man. His broad- 
brimmed hat is set well back on his head. He 
carries a staff in his hand and over his shoulder is 
filing a piece of sheepskin. 

Two Russian dolls in the ancient court costume 
of the Czars came to me by way of the wife of a 
Russian diplomat in Rome. They are gorgeous 
creatures and their dress is correct in every respect. 
It is said that this costume is fast disappearing, and 
would have become obsolete had it not been for the 
present Czarina, who wears it upon special occa- 
sions, and thus makes it obligatory upon the court 
ladies. 

A group of ten dolls, representing a colonial quilt- 
ing party, all dressed in colonial costume, was my 
share of the Bloodwood Cutter sale at Little Neck, 
L. I. Each doll is seated in the exact attitude of a 
quilter. Special interest attaches to this group for 

131 



THE DOLL BOOK 

two or three reasons. First, it is said to be over 
fifty years of age; second, it was the property of 
the man whom Mark Twain called the "Poet 
Lariat"; third, the poet's wife is the central figure, 
and each doll stands for some woman of the neigh- 
borhood. 

The dolls are all crudely carved wooden ones. 
"Flanders babies," they were called in olden times, 
and while the costumes are all colonial, there are no 
two alike. 

A writer on Sweden says dolls are scarce there, 
and tells of one girl seven years old who had never 
seen one. This must have been an isolated case, 
for I have rather a goodly number of Scandinavian 
dolls, and I know that children of the better class 
have large doll houses by means of which they are 
taught domestic science, and this would scarcely 
be possible without dolls to carry out the illusion. 
A little lad from Stockholm is dressed like the men 
and boys who live in the country and come into 
town to sell wood and kindling. He has a wealth of 
yellow hair and his clothes are made of sheepskin, 
some of it woolly side out, and some of it dyed. 
His little brown hat has a red cord and tassel. 

In writing about the manufacture of dolls, 
Vance Thompson tells of a visit he made to Gerlet, 
who was one of a family of doll makers. In a 
fanciful way she tells him that dolls are never alive 

132 



MY COLLECTION 

until they belong to somebody, that the drawers 
and boxes full of them you see in factories are all 
dead dolls. 

If you buy a doll and want to make it alive, you 
must repeat the following jingle: 

"Mittlebank, Bittlemak; 
Joy and Pearl 
Stop being a doll and be 
My little girl." 

If the doll is a boy, you must vary the jingle and 
say: 

' ' Bittlemak, Mittlebank ; 
Pearl and Joy, 
Stop being a doll and be 
My little boy." 

These mystic words she declared will bring any 
doll to life. 

When you come to the Dutch dolls, you para- 
phrase the Biblical quotation and read: "By their 
head-dresses ye shall know them," for the cap or 
bonnet not only announces the fact of the woman 
being married or single, but tells to the initiated 
the part of Holland which she makes her home. 

Here are women with great metal helmets and 
others wearing lace caps, with gold spirals at the 
sides like small bed springs, and again with hats 
that are turned up at the front, or sides, and some 
wear a Jersey cap with a wide frill of lace around 

133 



THE DOLL BOOK 

the face; some have wooden shoes and others wear 
leather ones with enormous buckles. 

The helmet plays or rather did play, for they are 
fast disappearing, an important part in the lives 
of the women. In olden times no girl wore one 
until she was married, but she owned one as soon as 
she could after she was grown. When a young 
man came a courting, if the girl looked upon his 
suit favorably, she went out of the room and put 
the helmet on her head; if she remained within 
and did not wear it, he knew that she had no idea 
of marrying him. 

Another curious custom the women of Holland 
have of avoiding saying yes or no to a proposal of 
marriage; in some parts of the country when a 
young man comes a wooing, if the girl encourages 
his suit she keeps the fire replenished; should she 
not put on fresh fuel, he goes away to bear his 
disappointments as best he may. 

The dolls of the Island of Maarken, like the 
people, are among the most picturesque in Hol- 
land. They are carefully conserved from genera- 
tion to generation, like the beautifully embroidered 
bodices the women and girls wear. 

The dear little dolls are set about in high chairs 
and ranged in regular rows and are only allowed 
to get down and play about on holidays as a special 
reward to the child who owns them. 

134 



MY COLLECTION 

They all have fringes of blond hair and one 
long curl hanging in front of each ear; the re- 
mainder of the hair is entirely covered by the miter- 
like white cap that is stiffly starched to keep it in 
place. Both the people and the dolls, when they 
are dressed in their best clothes, look as if they 
belonged to the chorus of a comic opera. 

A Scheveningen fishwife is the exact counter- 
part of real ones seen on the sands at that cele- 
brated watering place. She wears a short woolen 
skirt, a big red cloak and a scoop bonnet that 
nearly conceals her face. 

My Volendam man and woman are perhaps the 
queerest in the lot. The woman's cap covers her 
hair entirely and has stiff tabs that stand out on 
each side and her apron has a strip of trimming 
across the top instead of on the bottom. 

But the trousers of the man are enough to make 
one shriek with laughter; they are gathered very 
full at the waist band as if the first intention had 
been to make a petticoat, then the fullness is un- 
expectedly cut out at the knee and what is left is 
caught into a band, making the man look a good 
deal like a peg-top. Two huge silver buttons, 
which are the pride of his life, are attached to the 
waist band. 

A boy and a girl from Holland are very modern, 
although they wear the klompen, wooden shoes; 

135 



THE DOLL BOOK 

still they represent the children of to-day. The 
little creature in blue with cap from North Hol- 
land, with her stockings half knitted, is a fair type. 

The Hardanger girl wears a white shirt with 
black velvet bodice, brown skirt and multi-colored 
apron. The peaked cap on her head is a badge 
of the women of that part of the country. An- 
other one has the cap and cloak made of sheepskin 
with the wool inside, and they are really very 
pretty. 

Another Scandinavian doll in the collection 
wears a stuffy starched white head-dress over her 
flaxen hair, a clumsy bodice and a white apron 
with a band of trimming across the bottom. 

A Norwegian baby doll with its nursing bottle 
is a curiosity. Her dress and skirts are as long as 
those worn by our own babies a decade ago, but 
from the waist down they are swathed and wound 
about with wide bands. 

A Swedish nurse with a baby wears an enormous 
cap and bow with lace kerchief folded across her 
breast. The Hardanger girl only exchanges the 
peaked cap for a wondrous crown of gilt and 
jewels worn on her wedding day; her bodice is 
also covered with colored stones and her apron 
trimmed with wide lace. 

A chubby little creature is my doll from Denmark 
with a straw saucer for a hat, worn over a' curious 

136 





1. Danish, Swedish and two Norwegian costumes; Hardanger bride, Norway 

2. New Haven fish- wife, two Black Forest and two Nicaraguan dolls 



MY COLLECTION 

hood ; her bodice is covered with metal disks and 
colored stones. 

The small Egyptians of to-day have their little 
wooden Ushabti in the same style as those used by 
the children who played along the banks of the 
Nile 4,000 years ago. 

There is a variety of early Egyptian dolls, who, 
like their reverend seigniors, wore wigs and had 
movable limbs and long eyes; the hair of the wig 
being bunched up in an indescribably ugly manner. 
The majority of them were made of stone, porce- 
lain or wood, but some were carved to flare out 
like a hoop-skirt or the modern pin-cushion doll. 
Then again they had curious crocodile dolls, 
that opened and shut their huge mouths mechani- 
cally; one of them is in the British Museum. All 
the dolls belonging to the small Egyptian maiden 
were buried with her when she died, with the fond 
expectations that their spirit forms would rise with 
that of the child and do her service in the spirit 
world. 

In Cairo we find some dolls that are Anglo- 
Egyptian, but have at least a distinct Oriental 
flavor. The Arabs use few dolls and they are 
mostly foreign ones dressed in native costumes. 

An Anglo-Egyptian group, consisting of a 
donkey boy with his white cap and long blue 
gown, and the son of a pasha sitting on the 

137 



THE DOLL BOOK 

donkey, are true types of the country, although 
they were bought and dressed in New York. 

The favorite doll in Russia is one who repre- 
sents St. Nicholas, the patron saint of children and 
of the country. The sixth of December is the 
Saint's day, and in Russia as well as Holland, 
the evening of the fifth is celebrated. He is 
represented as being loaded with gifts for good 
children and a switch for disobedient ones. The 
switch is seldom presented though, for children 
become repentant as the day draws nigh, and 
the parents grow forgiving, and so past bad deeds 
are forgotten and forgiven and all share alike in 
the store of good things brought by St. Nicholas. 
He is supposed to enter the house by way of the 
chimney, nearly always bringing a servant with 
him to help in distributing his gifts. 

Very interesting is a nest of wooden dolls called 
Malri'shca. These are made to fit one into the 
other, and are decorated in various ways by the 
peasants. When taken together, they frequently 
illustrate an old folk tale, or a fairy story. 

One in my collection illustrates a fairy story by 
the well-known poet, Pushkin. The most com- 
mon subject is an old woman going to market with 
a grouse, or rabbit in her hand. The various 
pictures represent the troubles which overtook her 
before she reached the town market. 

138 



MY COLLECTION 

A doll from the north of Russia wears trousers 
and funny little sandals, which are called "lapty." 
And she carries her baby on her back in the hood 
of her big cloak. Cross-stitch embroidery in blue 
and red decorates her apron, and the bands of 
her dress lend it a smartness it would otherwise 
lack. 

The Brazilian beetles are enormous, and some 
clever people with deft fingers dress them up as 
dolls. I have three pair; two dancing girls, a 
bride and groom and two Indian chiefs. The 
costumes are perfect and the wonder is how human 
fingers can fashion such tiny garments for such 
queer dolls. 

A giant pair from the Austrian Tyrol are beau- 
ties ; the girl's full white waist and handsome velvet 
bodice set off a gay skirt and lace- trimmed apron. 
The boy wears embroidered velvet knee breeches 
above a pair of tasseled boots. The great silver 
buttons on their garments are heirlooms and very 
handsome. Each one wears a green felt hat with 
the regulation cock's feather in it. 

Three dolls from the Caugnawaga Indians who 
live across the St. Lawrence River from Montreal 
are rudely carved of wood, but nevertheless, fine 
types of their class. One tiny fellow on snow- 
shoes is wrapped, head and all, in a blanket 
with a rope girdle about his waist. 

139 



THE DOLL BOOK 

The two in a canoe are clothed in blankets with 
head decorations of feathers; they have each a 
paddle, and from their expression seem very intent 
upon making their way downstream. The one 
on a toboggan is elaborately dressed in a frock of 
colored figured stuff and top-heavy head covering 
with long tassel. He has a pair of snowshoes on 
his sled and blankets and provisions for camping 
out should he find it necessary. 

My two specimens from Labrador are unique; 
they are more crudely carved, if possible, than the 
Caugnawaga Indians. The one on snowshoes 
wears garments made entirely of leather and he 
carries his blankets in a roll on his back suspended 
by a band across his forehead. 

The one who drives a sled is clothed in heavy 
white woolen stuff; he carries his outfit, blankets, 
snowshoes and provisions, a bit of dried meat, 
and so forth, the same as the other Indians. 

A cradle-board from the San Carlos Reservation 
contains a rag doll swathed and laced on to the 
board as the little papooses are. The cradle itself 
is decorated with colored beads and has a hood to 
protect the head. 

A wooden doll from Vancouver Island is wound 
about with a piece of cedar bark cloth and the 
cradle-board is woven of strips of cedar bark. 

Another doll from Vancouver Island is more 

140 








o 

§ 
a 

JV 

I 



MY COLLECTION 

pretentious. She is a grotesque creature made 
entirely of cedar bark — a witch doctor, or fetish. 
Her features are most irregular and her bark 
hair is tied up in wisps on either side of her 
head. 

The Shoshone and Cheyenne dolls are rag bodies 
with features made on a waxed cloth that covers 
the head. The wigs are horse's hair and the 
Cheyenne dolls are profusely decorated with beads 
and small metal disks that represent money. 

An American cowboy, Uncle Sam, and the 
Goddess of Liberty, were the result of a raid on 
a wholesale doll house in New York, where the 
people at first absolutely refused to sell me a doll; 
they .relented later and sent me up these three very 
good specimens of American dolls. 

I have a lovely pair of dolls from the Pyrenees, 
the Basque country. They wear wooden shoes 
that turn up enormously at the toes, elaborately 
carved. The white stockings are hand knitted of 
an intricate pattern. The young man wears velvet 
breeches, full white shirt with his coat hanging 
over his shoulder; his long hair is covered by a 
flat cloth cap. 

The young woman wears a dark skirt, lace 
trimmed white apron, gaily colored kerchief folded 
across her breast with a long dark hood on her 
head. She has a distaff in her hand and is 

141 



THE DOLL BOOK 

spinning fine wool, though this does not appear 
very plainly in the photograph. 

My Spanish toreador is clothed in red and yel- 
low, decorated with big buttons and gilt braid; 
he is a very gorgeous creature. 

A pair from the Black Forest are a perfect de- 
light; they wear the costumes of the peasants 
which is both serviceable and picturesque. The 
boy has long dark hair, the girl light, and both 
coiffures are waved and the hair carefully arranged 
under their hats. The boy's coat" and breeches are 
dark and plain, while the girl's colored bodice is 
elaborately laced and trimmed. 

An English friend brought the funny little rag 
dolls from Nicaragua; the features are carelessly 
constructed and the black hair is made of cloth; 
the hats seem very elaborate, but they are simply 
pieces of rags trimmed with other pieces of rags. 

An Austrian peasant wears a queer little conical 
cap, tied under her chin and her skirt and bodice 
are decorated with bands of handsome embroidery. 

My collection of baby dolls and nurses with 
babies numbers a dozen or more. The old-time 
colored mammy with the white baby is familiar to 
both North and South. 

The French baby is encased in a wadded sack 
with a hood. His hair is short cropped and his 
face decidedly French. The Italian baby is 

142 



MY COLLECTION 

swathed and tied about with green ribbons. Both 
Italian and French babies are carried about on 
pillows. 

The Japanese baby takes its first view of the 
world from the back of mother or nurse, securely 
fastened so that it may not fall, but its little head 
bobs about in a very inconsequential and unreliable 
manner. 

My Italian nurse with baby in arms is a gorgeous 
creature with lace fichu, lace apron, ribbons, beads 
and a complicated headdress. 

The Brazilian women carry their babies on their 
backs somewhat after the fashion of the Japanese. 
My specimens are made of rags covered with black 
silk, and both baby and nurse are bedight with 
colored ribbons and lace. The nurse's turban is 
light' blue and her gown of bright colored cotton. 

The Viennese baby is encased in a sheath of mus- 
lin and lace decorated with bows, which extends to 
the head where it is surrounded ''with a pleated 
frill. The baby wears a lace cap and has its face 
covered with a white dotted lace veil. It is carried 
about on a pillow or in the nurse's arms. 

A pair of dolls from Baron Kropp's Bay, in the 
Museum of Natural History, New York, look as 
if they had had their heads turned by the journey 
from Siberia here, but I am told it is the fashion 
to wear them that way, with strings of beads and 

143 



THE DOLL BOOK 

plaits of hair hanging in front. They are clothed 
altogether in skins and look most comfortable — 
on a cold day. A direct contrast is an Ojibway 
doll made entirely of bamboo, which looks as if 
he had been made for warm weather only. 



1U 






1. Lake George papoose and Labrador dolls 

2. San Carlos doll and cradle-board; Soudanese doll 

Though lacking in form, these dolls illustrate the " mother idea" the world over 



CHAPTER XIV 

my collection {continued) 

I HAVE three dolls from the Orwell Art Indus- 
tries, Dublin, that are characteristic of their 
race and typical of their several classes. The 
best one of the lot is an aged woman, with 
true Milesian cast of features, somewhat lined and 
worn with age and the hardships of the Irish 
peasant life. 

Her gray hair is nearly covered by a large cap 
with lace frill; her somewhat faded blue eyes are 
mild and all are dominated by a sweet, gentle 
expression. She comes from the southwest coun- 
try, and shows more character and expression in 
her dear old face than any other doll I own. 

My Colleen Bawn has dark brown hair, blue 
eyes, fresh complexion, somewhat tanned, and 
wears a colleen cloak of brown with full hood to 
protect her head. 

The Gaelic boy wears the costume of the seven- 
teenth century, somewhat after the Robin Hood 
style. His tunic is belted and there are strappings 

145 



THE DOLL BOOK 

on his legs ; his scarf is wound round his body 
and buckled over the shoulder, and his soft hat 
has a fine buckle; indeed he makes a brave show. 

The principal feature of these dolls is the un- 
breakable faces, which will stand an immense 
amount of ill usage without any disfigurement be- 
yond the soiling of the paint. The color cannot 
be wholly destroyed and the faces will also wash 
clean, no matter how dirty they get. The material 
of their composition is a secret. 

The Welsh doll came from a town in Wales 
with an absolutely unpronounceable name. She 
is dressed as an old woman, and carries out the 
character completely. The most notable feature 
of her costume is her hat, which is made of the 
same material as an American silk hat. It is 
tall, conical and has a flat brim. The amusing 
part of it is that the Welsh woman wears this great 
hat over a muslin cap with full pleated borders at 
back and sides, and which is tied under the chin 
with a ribbon. Over all this is worn the hood of a 
red or black cloak. Underneath a cotton dressing- 
sack appears a woolen dress, gathered at the waist 
line by an apron tied in front with a ribbon. 
She carries the inevitable knitting basket, without 
which no Welsh woman is ever seen. Her needles 
are made of wire hairpins, and her work, a baby's 
sack, is half completed. 

146 



MY COLLECTION 

My Newhaven fishwife and Highland Laddie 
came across the Atlantic together. The woman 
is true to her type with creel on her back and her 
multitudinous petticoats; her expression is good 
and were she to open her mouth one might expect 
to hear her call out in melodious tones, "Caller 
herrin,' oh!" 

The Laddie, in his Stuart plaid, sporan and 
cairngorm buckle and bare knees, looks as if he 
could dance the reel till the "wee, sma' hours," 
and then be ready for a big dish of haggis. 

John Alden and Priscilla are two Pilgrim dolls, 
dressed in homespun, whose birthplace was Ply- 
mouth, Massachusetts. They wear the garments 
of the Pilgrim fathers and mothers, and are a dear 
little couple. Priscilla looks so meek with her 
white apron, white kerchief and white mob cap, 
that one wonders she had the courage to say even 
though ever so softly: "Why don't you speak for 
yourself, John?" John's collar, cuffs and hat and 
cape are good replicas of those worn by our an- 
cestors in those bygone days. 

There are fine mechanical dolls made in Switzer- 
land; dolls that walk about on a platform and 
bow and fan themselves and strike the hour with 
their fist on a bell. They also manufacture in 
that country delightful wooden images of Santa 
Claus. Certain families confine themselves to this 

147 



THE DOLL BOOK 

work; the father and mother carve the heads, the 
most difficult part, and the children take the other 
portions of the body. 

The Vaudoise young woman wears a green fig- 
ured skirt, black velvet bodice with elbow sleeves, 
a white kerchief folded within the neck of the 
bodice, and a big white apron. She has real hair 
hanging in long braids down her back. On her 
head is a little straw hat with a high straw pompon 
rising out of the center of the crown. 

The Bernoise young lady wears the picturesque 
close black velvet bonnet with lace, so familiar to 
all travelers; her long, pointed stomacher is em- 
broidered with beads. Her dress is black and she 
wears a long blue satin apron. Her fair hair is 
cut in a bang and the braids are tied with blue 
ribbon. The ornamental chains, which once had 
real use, and without which no peasant girl would 
consider herself properly dressed, decorate her 
bodice; it is the aim in real life to have the chains 
of solid silver, so that often a girl's fortune is truly 
locked up in chains. 

Just over the border of Switzerland, in Bressane, 
we find the peasants wearing a curious hat over a 
white linen cap ; my doll is typical ; the brim of this 
hat is quite flat and round, and covered with black 
lace insertion; while round the back from over 
the brim, hang four loops of the insertion. The 

148 



MY COLLECTION 

tiny crown is built of lace, and around its base is 
wound a gold cord with tassels hanging over the 
edge of the brim. 

My Kelpie maiden is a unique specimen of a 
doll. She is a water-sprite sure enough, though 
not in the least malevolent, nor does she change 
herself into a horse as the Scottish kelpie does. 
She is a native production, and comes from the 
Pacific Coast, where so many novel and artistic 
things are made, and she is as brown as a little 
Filipino. * She is made of kelp, a coarse seaweed 
that is found along the coast of Mexico and Cali- 
fornia. When wet, it is heavy and soggy and will 
bear the weight of a child like that wondrous 
water-lily in India. It is brown on the outside and 
cream-white inside, and when moist lends itself 
readily to manipulation. My kelpie is a symphony 
in brown and white, and the ingenuity shown in 
her manufacture is quite marvelous. 

She stands like a sea-nymph lightly poised on 
the half of a spherical seed-ball with the spoils of 
her native element about her. Her features are 
cleverly painted on a small seed pod, which makes 
an excellent head. Her brown locks are fine sea- 
weed, and the kelpie feathers on her hat have the 
natural curl of the ostrich feather. Her bodice is 
made and laced a la mode; her pleated skirt of 
dark brown is trimmed with bands of cream 

149 



THE DOLL BOOK 

colored kelp, and at her feet there is a bunch of 
seeds and feathery fronds, which she has appar- 
ently gathered for the tiny basket she carries on 
her arm. She dries and gets very brittle when kept 
in our overheated houses, but a little dampness soon 
puts her all right. 

A little creature from Auvergne wears a pic- 
turesque hat over a frilled white cap; its brim of 
blue cloth is turned up back and front and curiously 
enough is called bonspems — good days. Around 
the edge is a straw binding and the top of the crown 
is of white straw. The sides are of black velvet, 
with straw designs appliqueed. 

Two dolls from Madeira are marvels in the way 
of fine sewing. They were made by the Sisters in 
the Convent at Funchal, and show the native cos- 
tume of a man and a woman, which one seldom 
sees now, except upon children on a fete day. 
They both wear the same pointed cap and soft 
leather boots with red facings at the top. The 
man's full short trousers and white tunic are pic- 
turesque and quite suited to the climate. The 
woman's skirt is red, with a neatly fitted bodice 
and a small cape draped over one shoulder. The 
manner of draping this indicates to the initiated the 
island or province from which the woman comes. 
The real people ride in great clumsy ox carts on 
runners, and when they come down from a trip up 

150 







1. Kaugnawauga Indian on snowshoes 2. Indian woman. 3. Seminole 
Indian dolls 



MY COLLECTION 

to the church on the mount that overlooks the town, 
they ride in a "carro," that looks like a clothes 
basket on runners with a seat for two. There is 
one man to guide it and two to hold it back and 
they do some pretty fast sledding down that hill. 

My Onondaga chief as well as my chief from 
Oneida has a corncob body, and the faces and 
hands of each are covered with the husk of a red 
ear of corn, giving them exactly the right shade for 
red men. Their features are indicated with a 
pencil and they wear what might pass for small 
war bonnets of feathers. Their suits of buckskin 
and their moccasins are trimmed with beads. They 
do not look at all like Indians, though another one 
with his buckskin shirt covered with hands, each 
one indicating a scalp he is supposed to have taken, 
does seem a little more ferocious. 

One of my Mexican dolls is of clay, so old as to 
recall the cliff -dwelling period. It is the god of 
the cradle, and has done its duty in protecting the 
little brown Mexicans and amusing them for ages. 

The Iroquois doll is made of buckskin and 
dressed in the same material, profusely decorated 
with beads. She has buffalo hair, which is plaited in 
two long braids brought forward over the shoulders. 
The stoical, not to say wooden expression on the 
faces of these dolls is typical of their class. 

My Alaskan doll is grotesque in the extreme; 

151 



THE DOLL BOOK 

she came from that far away country, but she is 
not typical of the people. She is made of rags and 
a section of bamboo, and has a face so battered 
that one is irresistibly reminded of a bruised and 
beaten "Aunt Sally," that has served as a target 
for generations of boys. 

Nowhere in the world can be found more pic- 
turesque people than in Italy, and the dolls of that 
country are made like unto them. The types are 
reproduced with great fidelity. The collection is 
rich in Italian dollikins. 

The peasant doll, with her white stockings and 
red slippers, her strip of white linen with its 
colored border and fringe hanging down her back, 
her embroidered bodice and gaily striped apron, is 
a fascinating creature. 

The aprons vary in quality and color; some of my 
dolls wear much longer ones than others, but all 
are artistic and a delight to the eye. The peasant 
woman of the Campagna is more elaborately 
dressed than some, but as she is usually an artist's 
model, that might be expected. 

There are two of the Pope's Swiss Guard. One is 
tall and the other short, but both wear the antique 
yellow and black harlequin costume designed for 
them by Michael Angelo at the Pope's request. 
One carries a halberd, and both wear the soft cap 
and neck ruffle of their prototypes. The manikins 

152 



MY COLLECTION 

are comical reproductions of those fair-haired Swiss 
giants, whose duty it is and has been for hundreds 
of years to guard the Pope from the attacks of his 
enemies. A regiment of Swiss once saved the day 
for a Pope at the Vatican, and since that time a 
company selected from the best families of Switzer- 
land to look after the personal safety of the Pope, 
has always been in evidence. They are striking 
figures, as they lounge about the entrance and 
they fill an imposing if not important place in the 
entourage of his holiness. 

The meek and lowly Sister of Mercy, wearing 
the severely plain, black and white uniform of her 
order, seems almost out of place among the gay 
and giddy crowd. 

The blue-veiled Sister who represents the Order 
of Santa Maria Reparatrice is far more attractive. 
These Sisters spend their lives in kneeling in per- 
petual adoration before the altar of La Ciurese 
Adorazione, near the Trevi Fountain. Visit the 
church at whatever hour you may, you will find 
two of these blue-veiled sisters kneeling, as mo- 
tionless as statues before the Host upon the altar. 
Of course, the couple, like the guard, is changed 
every hour, but that to the uninitiated seems an 
interminable time to remain in one position. 

The costume of the Misericordia Brother, like 
that of the real Brother, gives him a weird and 

153 



THE DOLL BOOK 

uncanny appearance, but his looks belie him, for 
he is the prototype of one who devotes his life to 
good works, and the mask he wears is only to give 
him that separation from his fellows which his 
calling demands, and to hide his identity. The 
mother house of the Misericordia Brothers is in 
Florence, but there are branches of the same char- 
ity in other cities. The society is hundreds of 
years old, the principal object of which is to succor 
the sick and bury the dead. 

The members, which are recruited from all 
classes of society (the King of Italy is a member, 
and so may the poorest peasant be), devote them- 
selves to all charitable ideas unreservedly, for they 
receive no pay whatever for their labor. A certain 
number are on duty day and night; they go with 
stretchers and ambulances to fires, scenes of acci- 
dent, or to hotels and private houses to answer any 
call for help. Any one is free to ask their assistance 
and it is given without money and without price. 
Of course the society may and does receive gifts 
from grateful people, but there is no distinction 
made. St. Sebastian is their patron saint, and an 
heroic size statue of him is kept in their chapel. 
When a member is relieved from duty, he removes 
the mask and gown and goes about his usual busi- 
ness. It is a wonderful and most worthy charity, 
of which Italy may well be proud. 

154 



CHAPTER XV 

FETISH DOLLS 

FETISHISM, according to the Encyclopedia 
of Religious Knowledge, is one of the lowest 
forms of religion, and the word which comes 
from the Portuguese means a charm. 
The fetish is not necessarily the symbol of a 
deity; it is simply supposed to be a vehicle through 
which it acts, and any object, whether natural or 
artificial, animate or inanimate may become a 
fetish. This is brought about incidentally by a 
dream or whim. Some one is induced to believe 
that a supernatural power exercises influence in his 
destiny through a pebble or perhaps a feather, but 
more often through some grotesque image of a 
human creature — then he worships it. 

Binet says the whole problem of fetishism lies in 
the association of ideas, partly by heredity, and 
partly by mysterious somethings not yet penetrated 
by the wise men of the tribes, signs are taken 
by the worshipers for the thing signified. In 
short, fetishism means the adoration of a material 

155 



THE DOLL BOOK 

object to which the worshiper attributes mysteri- 
ous power. 

Among various tribes of Africa, particularly on 
the west coast, among the Indians in North and 
South America and in the South Sea Islands we 
find a great variety of fetishes, fashioned in human 
form, which, though they are not, strictly speaking, 
dolls, are in common parlance called fetish dolls. 

Fetishism is by no means confined to barbarous 
tribes; if one is interested in the subject he sees 
evidence of its practice every day, even among our 
own enlightened people, but this is not the place to 
speak of it. 

We read that the Sultans of Turkey keep a 
variety of dolls made in the image of their enemies 
over which they recite incantations and then beat 
them and knock them about in the most horrible 
manner imaginable, believing that they are thus 
torturing and bringing about the death of those 
they hate. 

Catherine de Medici used to believe that she 
could bring death and disaster to those who op- 
posed her power, by sticking pins into little images, 
meanwhile repeating a horrible jumble of words 
which was in reality a prayer that the people they 
represented might die. We all remember the 
pathetic story of Maggie Tulliver who, when life 
became unbearable, rushed to the attic and filled 

156 





fl 'I 



FETISH DOLLS 

the body of her dolls as full of pins as St. Sebas- 
tian's was filled with arrows. 

Some of the ceremonials connected with the Afri- 
can tribes in which these fetish dolls figure are very 
demoralizing. Whether they are used for religious 
purposes or for witchcraft depends very much upon 
the intelligence of the tribe and of the medicine 
man who conducts the services, but the result is 
much the same in either case, for witchcraft and 
religion are very much confused in the mind of the 
ignorant worshiper. 

The superstitious natives believe that the fetish 
doll is inhabited by spirits that have the power of 
warding off evil, or of bringing good luck to the 
person who gains its good will, as well as other mys- 
terious powers. They are common among many 
tribes, these "witch-brats with bulging eyes," as a 
well-known writer calls them. 

Among the many amulets worn by the Hudson 
Bay Eskimos to ward off the attacks of evil spirits 
disposed to harm one, is a headless doll depending 
from some portion of the garment worn on the 
upper part of the body. The origin of this and 
what becomes of the head thus rudely torn from 
the body, is lost among the early myths of the 
tribe. 

At Fort Chimo, Hudson Bay, when deer are 
scarce, the Shaman — witch doctor — erects a pole 

157 



THE DOLL BOOK 

in a favorable position and fastens to the top of it a 
doll made in the image of some famous hunter 
chief. The image is dressed in a complete suit of 
woolen stuff trimmed with black and fancy garter- 
ing. From the belt of bear skin hang innumerable 
strings of beads and amulets, one of which is a 
wooden doll hung with face outward so as to be 
always on the alert for game, V Another Eskimo 
fetish is a doll woman with a baby on her back. 
The Eskimos have a mechanical fetish doll, a man 
dressed in deer skin, sitting with his legs out- 
stretched and holding a drum in his left hand; the 
arms are of whalebone, and by pressing them the 
image can be made to beat the drum. 

Conjurers living on the east shore of Hudson 
Bay use a queer wooden doll without joints, which 
they hang to their belts face outward, ^he doll is 
supposed to be on the alert, ready to ward off any 
influence detrimental to the conjurer. 

In olden times when the North Carolina Indians 
went to war they carried with them their idol, a 
large puppet of which they told incredible stories 
and of whom they asked counsel when in extremity. 

A fetish doll among the Navajos, is an emblem 
of a nature deity called beli. In the various parts 
of Mexico there are dolls that serve the double 
purpose of children's toys and fetishes. 

Some of the dolls of Nogales are weird and un- 

158 



FETISH DOLLS 

canny things used to frighten children. One kind 
has a grotesque human face, a woolly body and 
four irregular, irresponsible legs that give the 
creature a horrible ugly look as if it were half tipsy. 
This doll is supposed to have a magic power like 
the devil and the people frequently invoke its aid 
when they are about to embark upon an enterprise 
or are engaged in any nefarious business. The 
children play with them when they are not too 
afraid of them; mothers tell their little ones that 
the dolls will punish them if they are bad, and 
young and old alike believe in the magical powers 
of the monstrosity. 

In Korea and China straw images are used as 
fetishes in a variety of ways. If a child is ill, one 
of these dolls is hung before the door of the house 
and the disease is supposed to leave the child and 
enter it when it is taken down and burned. 

Some of the dolls are hideous enough to give one 
the "creeps," were they come upon suddenly in the 
dark. When a follower of Buddha begins to repent 
of his sins, as he is apt to do once a year, he goes 
to a priest and buys a straw doll, which is from 
eighteen to twenty-seven inches in height and is 
supposed to be the image of the man who buys it. 

The priest tells him that he will receive absolu- 
tion if he dresses the image in clothes like his own 
and puts plenty of money into the straw man's 

159 



THE DOLL BOOK 

stomach before he disposes of it. With the cash 
is put a written statement of the man it represents 
and a prayer for the coming year. The object, of 
course, is to rid oneself of it as the Jews did the 
scapegoat. 

Sometimes the dolls are burned, but more often 
they are kept until the fourteenth day of the first 
month at which time the streets are sure to be full 
of wandering beggars. When the owner of the 
doll hears their cries, he passes the manikin through 
the partially opened gate and thus makes his mis- 
fortunes the property of the wretched beggar who 
willingly sells his peace of soul for the paltry sum 
inside the straw doll. This is the common expia- 
tory offering in both China and Korea, and the 
manner of making it varies but little in the different 
parts of the countries. 

Some of the dolls have a pair of straw sandals 
(spirit slippers) which are supposed to enable the 
wearer to take to his heels and to give the beggar 
or small boy who is not troubled with superstitious 
fears some difficulty in catching him. 

The Chinese have a superstitious reverence for 
ginseng, which they believe to be a panacea for all 
the ills that "Celestial" flesh is heir to. The root 
sometimes grows in a remarkable resemblance to a 
human figure, thus giving it the name of man-plant, 
and when such a one is found, the natives look upon 

160 




Zuni Indian god doll. These grotesque little creatures play important parts 

in Indian religious ceremonies, and are then given to the 

children to play with 



FETISH DOLLS 

it as a fetish to ward off all disease and believe it 
will prolong life for several days after a person has 
been given up to die. 

The root, from its fancied resemblance to the 
human form, is looked upon by the Chinese, much 
as the mandrake formerly was, by the people of 
Western Europe. They believe that the ginseng 
root, when torn from the ground, like the man- 
drake, emits cries and groans. 

In the Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, the 
natives use fetish dolls from three to six feet high, 
carved of wood and elaborately painted. They are 
called "winged angels," and are used as votive 
offerings by the savages to ward off disease and ill 
luck. Supplies of them are kept in the house for 
this purpose, and it is not uncommon to see three 
or four such images suspended from the ceiling 
of a hut. If any one is seriously ill the most im- 
portant measure adopted with a view to speedy 
recovery is to make an effigy of some sort. 

Crudely carved wooden images serve as fetishes 
in Siberia and in South America; destitute of hair 
and in some cases of clothing, they are as acceptable 
to their worshipers as is the satin-gowned and 
gem-bedecked Bambino in the church of Ara Coela 
in Rome. 

In Nova Zembla a piece of wood cut out in the 
crude figure of a man is worshiped with burning 

161 



THE DOLL BOOK 

fervor, as the natives believe the devil enters it and 
would harm them if they did not pay tribute. 

In British Columbia a curious, uncanny doll 
made of cedar bark is thought to possess the power 
of breaking the spell of the witch doctor and to 
hold the power of life and death in her hands. 

An English writer tells how an African suhman, 
which word seems to be applied both to the spirit 
and the object it for the time inhabits, is made. 
The person who wishes to obtain a suhman, pro- 
ceeds to the dark and gloomy recesses of the forest 
where a local witch doctor resides. He places rum 
upon the earth as an offering, cuts a branch from 
a tree, and carves it to something like a human 
body, about ten to fourteen inches in length — if it 
becomes a suhman a low hissing noise is heard; 
it is now a receptacle for the spirit which is to work 
good for him and evil to his enemies. 

Some of the Korean guide-posts might be called 
fetish figures ; they are rude posts with grotesquely 
carved human faces. The head of the image is 
crowned with a hat, has large ears, and there are thin 
strips of wood along each side to represent clothing. 

The posts are placed along the roads at intervals 
of half a mile; some are six feet high, are painted 
and bear on the front an inscription showing the 
distances. It is believed that the sign post is a 
shamanistic idol to the spirits of the place. 

162 




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1. Alaska, Corn Husk and French rag doll 

2. Italian nurse and baby, Vienna baby, and Brazilian nurse and baby 



THE MANUFACTURE OF DOLLS 

are perhaps the most common, though they can 
never be commonly used on account of the cost, 
six guineas (thirty dollars) being quite too ex- 
pensive a doll for most children. 

"The sleeping doll is made with a small weight 
hung to the bow adjoining the two eyes at the back, 
nicely balanced so that when the doll is upright 
it does not move the eyes, but when lying down 
the weight maintaining its own position moves 
round and brings down the upper part which is 
colored to resemble the eyelid, ball and socket. 

"The bodies are stuffed with cow's hair, or 
deer's hair, cork chips or cork dust, fine wood 
shavings, wood or wool, not with sawdust like John 
Leech's little girl. Bellows are placed inside 
speaking dolls, and clockwork adapted to the 
joints of the small creature operates the puppets. 

"The first walking dolls had wheels in place of 
feet; later feet that moved forward were invented 
in Paris. In 1813, an inventor named Benton, 
applied a small steam engine to the legs which 
moved alternately like human feet. Small music 
boxes are used to make a doll sing and phono- 
graphs take the place of the talking starlings used 
in ancient Italy." 

Motors are being used in the doll industry, as 
will be seen by the following clipping from a late 
newspaper: 

173 



THE DOLL BOOK 

"Last week Londoners witnessed the unique spectacle of an 
automaton walking through the streets of London. This auto- 
maton, which has created a sensation in America, is called * Enig- 
marelle,' stands six feet high, weighs 198 pounds, and is composed 
of three hundred and sixty-five parts. 

"The feet are of iron, the lower limbs of steel and wood, the 
arms of steel and copper, and the body an insulated steel wire 
frame, cased with fiber and raw hide. The head is of wax. 
* Enigmarelle ' can not only walk, but ride a cycle and write its 
name on a blackboard. Locomotion is caused by powerful 
motors, to which power is furnished by storage accumulators that 
also maintain the equilibrium of the figure. 

"At the automaton's back is a switch-board from which the 
various movements are operated. When people see it walk they 
are sure to be skeptical and hint that there is a child inside. 

"Whether it is a mechanical toy or clever trick, has never been 
ascertained, but the hands and legs take off and the figure is 
partly undressed to show the electrical workings within him, while 
his flaxen head opens and shows a battery and other apparatus." 



174 



CHAPTER XVII 

DOLL CURIOSITIES 

jL MONG the curious uses to which dolls are 
/% put, is that of a sign over the door of a 
JL ^ shop in London, called "A Dolly Shop," 
which is not a shop for the sale of dolls, 
as one might suppose. On the contrary, it is an 
unlicensed pawnshop where old clothes form the 
principal stock in trade. 

A black doll is always used and some writers 
contend that this is an image of the black virgins 
that are common in Catholic countries. Again it 
is claimed that this is an image of the Virgin sold 
at the time of the Reformation with Church vest- 
ments and other ecclesiastical refuse. 

A writer in Notes and Queries flouts these no- 
tions and gives the following version of the origin 
of the use of the black doll as a sign: 

" In Norton Falgate some centuries ago, there was a shop for 
the sale of toys and rags. One day an old woman brought a 
large bundle of rags to sell. She asked the proprietor not to open 
it until she should return and see it weighed. 

175 



THE DOLL BOOK 

"As the woman did not return, the bundle was opened after 
weeks, and to the ragman's surprise he found a black doll neatly 
dressed, wearing a pair of gold earrings. He hung it over his 
door that the woman might see it and come to claim her property. 
She did see it and after settling with the rag man, she gave him 
the doll to use as a sign; it was a happy thought and soon 
became the favorite sign of all dealers in rags and toys. 

The writer further declares that this may be all 
romance, as old clothing was formerly sold to un- 
civilized tribes, who were willing to barter any- 
thing for finery. It may have been thought a doll 
tricked out in gaudy colors would be the best 
possible bait for people to whom bright and showy 
things more especially appealed. 

There is an annually recurring festival at Dongo 
Zaka, Japan, at which the famous chrysanthemum 
dolls are exhibited. These ingenious figures are 
arranged so as to form a tableau with scenes from 
history or fiction with well-known characters. 

They are life-size and face, hands and feet are 
made of some composition that almost shames 
nature. The curious thing about them is that 
whatever is represented, costumes, armor, and so 
forth, are made entirely of chrysanthemum twigs, 
leaves and flowers, not cut and woven in as one is 
apt to think at first sight, but alive and growing in 
potted plants. 

The roots are quite hidden and the visitor is full 
of unbelief until he is allowed to go behind the 

176 



DOLL CURIOSITIES 

scenes. The entire body is a frame woven of 
split bamboo. The roots of the plants are bound 
with damp earth and packed in straw so that they 
keep fresh a long time. 

The plants are so arranged that, the leaves and 
blossoms can be pulled through the basket frame 
and woven into whatever design has been selected 
by the gardener. Warriors in full armor, geishas, 
famous emperors, great actors and author dolls 
are shown every year, the whole picture being 
executed with wonderful effect. 

The famous manikin of Brussels, Belgium, 
which was made by the sculptor, Duquesnoy, in 
memory of the victory of Ransbeck for the people 
of Brabant is nearly three hundred years old. 
The English carried it off to Britain after the 
battle of Fontenoy, but the Belgians retook and 
brought it back to Brussels as their most cherished 
possession. 

"Then the French took a hand in the matter 
and stole the manikin, but were eventually obliged 
to restore it. In 1817 a convict, so the story runs, 
took the statue and the Belgians thought it was 
forever lost to them. The city of Brussels went 
into mourning while it put forth every effort to 
find the lost manikin. At last it was discovered 
and the thief caught and put in the pillory. Then 
it was decided to place an iron railing around the 

177 



THE DOLL BOOK 

figure as they do around the statues in Scotland, 
and thus surrounded it has remained unmolested 
ever since." 

We further read that the manikin is the only 
existing statue which possesses a royal decora- 
tion. It was conferred on him by the Archduke 
Maximilian, who gave him rich clothes and a 
servant. 

Louis XV. made him a knight of his order, and, 
later on, Joseph II., of Austria, conferred on him 
the same honor. 

On great feast days the manikin is clothed in the 
robes of his Louis XV. order. 

Beads are a favorite form of legacy to statues. 
In 1509 a lady named Beatrice Krikemer be- 
queathed to a Madonna statue in St. Stephen's, 
Norwich, England, "my best beads, to hang about 
her neck on certain days," while a few years later 
this image came into possession of the coral beads 
of Alice Carre through the same means. King 
Henry III. left an emerald and a ruby as a legacy, 
to be hung on the silver statue of the Virgin. 

Clothes were constantly being left to statues 
in the Middle Ages. A lady named Catherine 
Hastings, in 1506 bequeathed "to our Lady of 
Walsingham my velvet gown; of Doncaster, my 
tawny camlet gown; of Beleross, my black camlet, 
and to our Lady of Himmingburgh a piece of 

178 



DOLL CURIOSITIES 

cremell and a lace of gold of Venus set with 
pearl." 

Papa Moseas at Burgos is a wonderful Spanish 
doll, who has spent his life inside the case of a 
clock over the door of the great cathedral. Like 
the celebrated puppets of Venice, he used to come 
out of his hiding place at the first stroke of the 
hour and gesticulate to the right and to the left in 
a wonderful manner. The doll's antics amused 
the children to such an extent that their laughter 
disturbed the congregation. The Bishop finally 
decided to have the wires that worked the joints 
of the arms cut and he has been a quiet and well- 
behaved doll ever since. 

In the Empress' palace, Pekin, there is a clock 
with a contrivance that at each hour sets in motion 
a doll dressed in handsome silk and gold braid 
which does some tight-rope dancing. 

At a competition of toys in Paris, a doll by M. 
Gerome was given as prize to M. Chaslee, the 
inventor of the movable eyelids for dolls. 

The avidity with which children will seize upon 
any substitute when the regulation doll or mother's 
apron are not at hand points to the universality of 
dollatry. The pillow doll, sticks, bottles and the 
broom tied around with a towel or any other piece 
of cloth for a trailing skirt are common and 
natural substitutes. 

179 



THE DOLL BOOK 

When these are not at hand, an ingenious 
youngster will seize upon the nearest object and 
clothe it with her imagination and be happy. 

A small Japanese maiden wears a gown made 
entirely of spun glass, a la Fanny Davenport. 
This, of course, is simply a curiosity made by the 
glass manufacturers to show what can be done 
with spun glass. 

A monkey doll made of sponge is another 
curiosity; he wears a blue coat with red sleeves, 
and a brown wool hat is perched jauntily on his 
impish head. His eyes and buttons are made by 
putting a small black bead on a pin and then 
thrusting the point of the pin into the sponge. 

Mrs. Scott Cooper, of Stockton, California, has 
evolved something distinctly original and extremely 
novel in the way of dolls. The heads are carved 
from oak balls with a common jackknife, and Mrs. 
Cooper has shown a remarkable talent for that 
class of work. The lady, who is quite well known 
on the American stage, has a great deal of artistic 
talent, tending mostly toward modeling and carv- 
ing. The eyebrows of these dolls are made of 
hair from a clothes brush, as are also their other 
hirsute adornments. The ears are made of sepa- 
rate oak balls, pasted on with putty. 

Miss Eleanor Robson has a mascot which al- 
ways is one of the objects of interest among the 

180 



DOLL CURIOSITIES 

fittings of her home behind the scenes. It is a 
funny little Chinese doll, which invariably has a 
prominent position on the wall or over the make-up 
table. Miss Robson is no more superstitious than 
most people, yet it is doubtful if she would feel 
that she could go through a performance without 
a mishap of some sort if this Chinese doll were 
not in place. When she left school and went to 
San Francisco to join the Frawley Stock Company 
and make her debut as an actress with her mother, 
who was a member of the company, she lived in 
a house where there was a Chinese cook. Her 
mother had been kind to him, and on the day of 
Miss Robson's debut, he solemnly presented her 
with a mysterious bundle, which he said contained 
a doll that he had brought with him from China, 
where it had been blessed by a Buddhist priest 
of great sanctity. 

Eleanor Gates Tully, who writes of Western 
life of the plains, has a curious and unique way 
of creating the characters for her books. She is a 
young woman who likes to have things very defi- 
nitely worked out in her own mind before she 
attempts to write about them. She wishes to see 
and feel that the characters of her book are real 
people before she writes. In order that she make 
these people of her imagination vivid and real, she 
goes to a toy shop and purchases a lot of dolls and 

181 



THE DOLL BOOK 

proceeds to dress them up to represent the charac- 
ters in her new story. When she has accomplished 
this to her satisfaction, the dolls are placed in a row 
in front of her and she writes her story. That is 
how she worked out the characters in her recent 
novel, "The Plough Woman." Clyde Fitch is 
said to write his plays in the same way. 



182 



CHAPTER XVIII 

CURIOUS CUSTOMS AND TALES OF DOLLS 

ONE of the marriage customs of the Mad- 
hra Brahmins of southern India is the 
presentation to a bride of two wooden 
dolls from Tirupati, a town in the North 
Arcot District of Madras. 

In certain parts of Germany, a toy cradle and 
doll are given to newly-married couples as a re- 
minder of their future responsibility. 

In some provinces of Mexico, a huge doll is 
given to the bride among her wedding presents, and 
is taken with her on her wedding journey. Brides 
are often so young that they have not given up 
their dolls, in which case they are not discarded, 
but taken to the new home, where they have an 
honored place until displaced by the first baby. 

Every mother's child of us may rejoice that we 
were not born into the Passamaquoddy tribe, for 
we would be grown women before we could ask 
for our dolls. 

183 



THE DOLL BOOK 

The Passamaquoddy word for doll is Amps- 
kudahean (plural Ammpokudakekanek), an Indian 
word, which means literally, figure or picture as 
made on wood or other substance. 

On arriving at puberty, Roman girls made a 
votive offering of their dolls and toys to the gods 
after a ceremonious farewell, as a sign that life's 
play was over, and life's work must now begin. 
- In Egypt, a life-size figure of a maiden is cast 
into the Nile on its rising. In ancient days, a 
young girl was thrown into the water, in hope 
of propitiating the river god, but that custom is 
happily of the past. 

Among some of the tribes of Central Africa a 
rag doll is buried under the door of the room in 
which a girl is born; a mutton bone is buried in 
like manner when a boy is born. 

At certain times of the year, the little ones of 
India throw their beloved dollies into the Ganges 
to propitiate the river god. 

In North Devon the girls bring dolls with them 
as they go begging on May Day. I have not been 
able to discover why, nor if the doll or dress is in 
any way peculiar. 

Van den Steiner tells us that in ancient Rome a 
doll, a span long, made of straw, was a favorite toy 
and that one was always fastened to the roof of 
their places of festivities as a sign that some frolic 

184 



CURIOUS CUSTOMS AND TALES 

was in progress and a desire that everyone should 
know it. 

At the time of the yearly atoning sacrifice, the 
Romans threw rush dolls into the Tiber from 
the Sublician Bridge ; these were substitutes for the 
human sacrifices that had formerly been made to 
the goddess Mania. 

The Javanese bride throws her dolls into the 
fire the day before her wedding, and the bridal 
company give her more to replace them. 

In Syria when a girl is old enough to marry and 
has a desire to do so, she hangs a doll in her window. 

The natural imitation of children is shown by 
the surprising quickness with which they seize 
upon any family event and make their dollies con- 
form to the circumstances. On the occasion of 
an older sister marrying, the baby's doll must at 
once have a white dress and bridal veil. 

If perchance a death occurs, the dolls are shut 
up for days and only emerged from their seclusion 
swathed in black robes. 

It is not every child though that will proceed to 
have a funeral on her doll's account, like one de- 
scribed in a newspaper. Mrs. H., coming in from 
market one morning, discovered a piece of black 
crepe attached to the door-bell. She had hardly 
strength to ring or patience to wait for the door to be 
opened. Her eight-year-old daughter stood by 

185 



THE DOLL BOOK 

the maid, waiting to greet her, and was surprised 
at being caught up with her mother's arms and 
smothered with kisses. 

"Oh, I thought you were dead!" said the mother. 

"Dead?" questioned the child. "Why?" 

"Because of the crepe on the door. Who put it 
there?" 

"I did, but Jennie is to blame. I told her to 
remove it as soon as the funeral was over." 

"Whose funeral?" 

"My dolly's funeral. She died last night, and 
we had a funeral and then buried her in the garden. 
That's all, mother. Don't cry, Jennie was awful 
careless." 

A St. Nicholas doll of Holland is made of spiced 
cake, rolled flat, dressed with much gold and tinsel ; 
the sex is suggested by the clothing, which is 
judiciously arranged to make this manifest. The 
dolls are given to the maids and men-servants, so 
that all may have sweethearts. The confectioners 
take unusual pains with these, for they are in great 
demand. They are used at the festival of St. 
Nicholas, which is held on the evening of the fifth 
of December, in Holland. 

The girl students of Chicago University recently 
gave a doll party at which they dressed innumer- 
able dolls for the little folk of the Settlements. 
They did this, they said, to prove that a college 

186 



CURIOUS CUSTOMS AND TALES 

education does not win women from home inter- 
ests. They dressed rag dolls, baby dolls, dolls 
with closing eyes, and dolls of every variety in 
costume successfully and the work was done with 
such accuracy and nicety of detail as to prove their 
dexterity in needlework. The whole affair was 
voted a great success. 

"My dolly isn't a plaything," said a little girl 
indignantly one day, "she's real folks," and one of 
the daily papers tells of two children, who, having 
planned and saved their pennies, determined to 
have dolls that were just as much alive as they 
were. The father was allowed to execute the 
commission, and these were his directions, em- 
phatically laid down. 

"Now, father, don't buy any doll you see. Take 
it up and look at it right in the eyes, and if it looks 
as if it loved you, then you can buy it." 

Little Alice Terry, only eleven years old, wanted 
to be a missionary to South America, and sailed 
away to her new post with a doll half as big as 
herself in her arms. 

A practical joke played on a child caused great 
grief. Her doll refused to cry when its little 
stomach was pressed; something had gone wrong 
with its interior mechanism. A friend who had 
something of a mechanical turn of mind, volun- 
teered to right the wrong. 

187 



THE DOLL BOOK 

He soon discovered the trouble, but instead of 
fastening the spring to the crying machinery, he 
secured it to the tongue, so that when the doll was 
squeezed, it ran its tongue out of its mouth instead 
of crying. Great was that child's astonishment 
and indignation. To this day she has not for- 
given the author of that joke. 

In certain savage countries, missionaries have 
only been able to penetrate the interior by offering 
dolls to the children. 

Dolls or images were put to a curious use in 
ancient Mexico. When the Spanish arrived, they 
found large numbers of what they called "living 
images of the gods," or idols. They were made of 
clay or wood and were ruthlessly destroyed, but 
luckily some escaped the destruction, and Zelia 
NuthalPs researches have revealed the fact that 
they were never idols, but belonged to the native 
system of tribal organization and were and are of 
the utmost importance. The theory is that when- 
ever a new colony was founded, the founder gave 
each chief as a model a different clay doll painted 
with the distinguishing marks, costume, decora- 
tions, etc., he and his people were to adopt. 
These were a sort of totem doll, and were kept 
sacredly for reference, and used as a means of 
identification and proof that the tribe had adhered 
to its ruler. 

188 




A pair from the Austrian Tyrol. The regulation green hat and cock's feather 
are here in all their splendor 



CURIOUS CUSTOMS AND TALES 

Victor Hugo's delightful creation, Cosette, was 
happy with her lead sword, a foot long, until some 
pitying friend gave her a modern doll, and then her 
misery began, for she was always more or less 
afraid of the new doll, she seemed such a grande 
dame. 

Some American Indian dolls have their noses 
sewed on. Sitka dolls are made of leather with 
beads for eyes and teeth and are dressed in fur. 

Olive Thorne Miller writes in September St. 
Nicholas, 1888: "Laura Bridgman had a doll 
which she kept with ribbon tied over its eyes that 
it might be blind as she was. She doctored it and 
nursed it with hot water bottles and headache drops 
as she herself was doctored." 

In civilized life, dolls' fashions change with the 
rest of the world, but Mrs. I. D. Bradish, of Fre- 
donia, New York, owns dolls, a boy and girl, or 
rather bride and groom, that have been the play- 
things of three generations. 

A tall German officer of the Guards, who used 
to meet the Grand Duchess Olga daily, asked her 
for a doll, and told her that a tiny one that he could 
keep in his pocket and play with when he was 
on guard would do. 

The small Russian maiden, although a duchess, 
felt a dislike to giving up one of her dolls, and yet 
her generous nature prompted her to bestow one 

189 



THE DOLL BOOK 

of her best beloved manikins upon the German 
giant, who treasures it beyond any other keepsake 
he possesses. 

When is a doll not a doll? 

Are headless dolls really dolls, or merely "manu- 
factured cotton articles"? This is a perplexing 
question raised recently at the Custom House, and 
Collector Stranahan has assessed many invoices in 
this line of manufacturers of cotton with duty at 
the rate of forty-five per cent. 

In a case which came before the Board of 
United States General Appraisers and the Federal 
Courts for adjudication, the importers insist that 
headless dolls are toys, and as such should be 
admitted at the rate of thirty-five per cent, ad 
valorem. The Government contends that the 
articles would be dolls were the heads attached, 
but in the condition imported, the productions 
must be regarded as manufactures. 

The Board of Appraisers has reached the con- 
clusion that Collector Stranahan is right in de- 
manding duty on the articles as manufactures, on 
the theory that a doll is not a doll if the head is 
missing. 

Giving away a doll with each copy of a new 
book is certainly a novel idea. The publishers of 
Mrs. C. B. Thurston's "Jingle of a Jap," offers a 
Japanese doll with each volume. The book is a 

190 



CURIOUS CUSTOMS AND TALES 

series of colored drawings accompanied by verses 
describing the love of a Japanese doll for a haughty 
Parisian one. The addition of the real doll will 
perhaps shock the conservative readers, but will 
offend no child. 

One's heart aches when reading about "the 
handsomest doll in the world," which had been 
made and dressed exactly like her mistress, a young 
queen. She was thought to be too fine for every- 
day use and so was packed away in a great closet 
all by herself. Her life was only made bearable by 
the surreptitious visits of the warden's little girl, 
who finally succeeded in gaining more liberty for 
her. 

A Western editor, who feels that the Teddy 
Bears are crowding dolls out of existence, writes 
as follows: 

"It is enough to make a perfect lady of a doll mad. The dear 
little girls who have always cried for dolls at Christmas, are this 
year crying for Teddy Bears, and dolls are left on the shelves 
to cry the paint off their pretty cheeks because of the neglect. 
So great is the demand for Teddy Bears, which range in price 
from ninety-eight cents to twelve dollars, that the factories can't 
keep up the supply, and what makes it still more alarming is that 
factories are supplying sweaters, overalls, jackets, and so forth, for 
the bears. Will it be as pretty a sight when a little girl mothers 
a bear as when she mothered a doll? Well, we guess not. We 
are on the side of the dolls, and are ready to preside at an in- 
dignation meeting of dolls, baby dolls, boy dolls and lady dolls 
at any time they call the meeting. We are not much of a talker, 
but we are this much better talker than a doll; we can talk with- 
out being punched in the stomach." 

191 



THE DOLL BOOK 

The London Daily Mail recently published the 
following interesting paragraph anent dolls: 

"Do many women keep their dolls after they have put away 
childish things? The fact, elicited by counsel in a wife's petition 
for judicial separation, that she still had in her possession a wax 
doll and a golliwog, has given rise to the question. Many women, 
inquiry shows, do keep at least one doll all their lives. through, 
one dear favorite wrapped up in lavender, whose rosy cheeks pale 
in the seclusion of the sanctuary drawer in which they spent 
nearly the whole of their days, with the exception of those 
moments in which they are brought forth to be shown to some 
little daughter, niece or grandchild." 

"Mother's doll looks strangely antiquated to the 
childish eyes of little Miss Twentieth Century; 
its dress is "funny," its hair is not coiffee as it 
ought to be; it's just a dear quaint thing to be 
reverenced rather than admired. But to mother 
it is the epitome of all that is sweet and far away, 
a tangible relic of the golden days of old, which, 
joyful though the present may be, are always 
aureoled with a halo of special glory. 

"Ask any women how it comes to pass that her 
dolls still find a place tucked away in her ward- 
robe and she will be amazed that anything else 
should be expected. It is true that we have no Feast 
of Dolls, such as the Japanese enjoy, but for all 
that, supposing a muster of dolls of ten, twenty, 
thirty, forty and even fifty years old were called, 
it would be forthcoming, and the ranks would be 
by no means serried." 

192 



CHAPTER XIX 

NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN DOLLS 

DOLLS among the North American In- 
dians are made of a great variety of 
materials and used for a variety of pur- 
poses. Clay, rags, knots and bark of 
trees and the wood of sacred cottonwood trees are 
most commonly used. 

Some of them have Indian faces daubed with 
long lines of crimson and yellow, while the bodies 
of others are decorated with curious symbols in 
primary colors, with feather headdresses of various 
sorts. 

Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, the best known authority 
on the Indian, has made a collection of the dolls 
used by the Indians, and has written a large and 
very interesting book about them — published by 
the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington. 

One part of the collection is in the Smithsonian 
Institute; the other is in the Peabody Museum, 
Boston. These dolls are grotesque and hideous in 
the extreme. They are symbols of the various 

193 



THE DOLL BOOK 

Indian gods and are supposed to be prayer-bearers 
from the makers to the divinity. They are called 
Katcina by the Indians and miscalled god-dolls 
by the ignorant. 

These are ceremonial dolls and not idols as 
supposed by many people. They are part of the 
religious beliefs and ceremonials of the Indians 
who made and used them mainly for instructing 
the children in symbolism. 

They are made from the roots of subterranean 
branches of the cottonwood, which is sacred to 
them, and which is soft enough to be carved with 
a stone knife; this implement in olden times was 
the Indian's only instrument for cutting, and was 
for the most part grotesque. 

There are certain festivals among the Indians 
of Mexico and Arizona, which occur between 
planting time and harvesting, and which always 
end with a dance — the snake dance of the Moki's 
being one of the weirdest and most mysterious. 

During the week's festivities which precede 
the dance, certain men of the tribe impersonate 
supernatural beings, and are hidden from the 
public view most of the time. At the dance they 
wear helmets or masks decorated with appropriate 
symbols which are supposed to transfigure them 
into the deities they represent and honor. 

During their sequestration they have been 

194 




Indian dolls in canoe 




Indian doll on toboggan 



NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN DOLLS 

making dozens of the dolls which represent the 
gods of the tribe, viz., the god of the snow, the god 
that eats up the rain clouds, the fire god, the sun 
god, and the corn goddess, who is a very indiffer- 
ent Ceres, and various wild animals that are used 
for food. 

Some of them boast a tuft of eagle's feathers, 
and are carefully carved; others are crude and 
have bodies that are clumsy and awkward, all 
suggesting the masked dancers. These dolls are 
presented to the children, who play with them as 
other children do with dolls that are provided for 
them. After the presentation the gods are sup- 
posed to return to their homes for the winter 
solstice. 

When not in use they are hung up until wanted 
and the visitor to any Indian habitation is pretty 
certain to see a row of these dolls suspended from 
the ceiling. Thus the children are taught in early 
life the symbolism connected with them. 

There are a few made of baked clay, and all are 
painted in the gayest of colors, bright red, yellow 
and green predominating. Sometimes, but not 
often, one is found decorated with a piece of cloth. 

Among many Indian tribes of to-day, par- 
ticularly those of the Middle West, the dolls take 
on a vague likeness to braves and squaws of the 
tribe. 

195 



THE DOLL BOOK 

The bodies are made of rags, wood or even 
corncob, anything that will make a solid founda- 
tion for arms and legs ; eyes, nose, and mouth are 
marked with charcoal on a cloth. Beads are occa- 
sionally used to make a variety of eyes. They are 
dressed in leather very elaborately embroidered, 
and with tiny moccasins. 

Miss Alice Fletcher replies to Mr. Stanley Hall's 
question concerning dolls among the North Ameri- 
can Indians: "Among the Indian tribes with 
which I am familiar, there is no special treatment 
of dolls. All depends upon the particular child's 
imagination and imitative powers. In the Omaha 
language, the word applied to doll is the same as 
that signifying a child with the addition of the 
words signifying clay. This composite word has 
come into use from the dolls furnished by the 
traders, these having composition heads. The 
word, however, is now generally applied to all 
kinds of dolls, even those made of rags, sticks and 
corncobs. Children frequently make clay images 
and play with them. I have some curious speci- 
mens in my collection." 

James Mooney, of the Bureau of Ethnology, 
writing of dolls, says: "Among the Mokis and 
Pueblo tribes, generally, dolls are commonly 
representations of mythological characters and 
consequently have some religious significance. I 

196 



NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN DOLLS 

doubt if this be the case among any other tribes, 
unless possibly among the totem-pole tribes of the 
Northwest coast. The Kiowas with whom I am 
most closely associated, have a religious dread of 
making tangible representations of mythological 
beings. Little girls frequently carry and dress up 
puppies as dolls, and play house with their dolls as 
with us." 

In Uncle Sam's collection in Washington, there 
are tiny Alaskan babies dressed in little coats of 
deerskin to protect them from the Arctic winter. 
There are others whose garments are made from 
the softest sealskin trimmed with beads and edged 
with white hair from the leg of the deer. 

There are a few two or three inches high, carved 
of wood, equally well dressed even to their mittens, 
skin caps with ear-laps and their perfectly correct 
snowshoes and toboggans. Each one is properly 
equipped and accoutered for the life he is supposed 
to lead. 

Many of the Alaskan dolls are tiny creatures 
carved from walrus tusks, with features of black 
enamel; some are painted to represent tattooing 
and look like totem-poles. Some of them are 
carved in a sitting position like certain East Indian 
dolls. 



197 



CHAPTER XX 

HOME-MADE DOLLS 

A LTHOUGH the oldest dolls in the world, 

/% exhumed from Egyptian tombs and now 
JL -JBL resting in the museums of Europe, are 
made of bronze, wood and occasionally 
rag, the rag-dolls of our grandmother's day un- 
doubtedly hold first place in the realm of home- 
made dolls. 

There is an infinite variety of them, from the rag- 
doll with its ink-made features to the doll envelope 
stuffed with rags, whose face is artistically painted 
with washable colors. 

The first ones were crude in the extreme, with 
staring features and stiff, unbending arms and legs ; 
later ones are more or less jointed, with expressive 
faces that will wash. Some of this generation are 
so artistic that they often crowd the manufactured 
image to the wall. 

Jointed elbows and knees were an achievement 
in doll making, and once the way of making joints 
had been discovered, everyone that made a doll, 

198 



HOME-MADE DOLLS 

marveled at the simplicity of it and wondered why 
she herself had not invented it. 

The washable paints delighted the heart of 
every doll mother, for nothing made the little 
manikins seem so real to their owners as to be able 
to wash their faces and to have clothes that would 
allow the dolls to be dressed and undressed in 
imitation of themselves, for the most natural thing 
in the world is to have dolly do everything that 
Jane and Jennie do. 

In these days of mechanical toys, dolls and their 
belongings come in for their full share of improve- 
ment. But the child is nearer to nature than 
ordinary grown-ups, and despite the wonderful 
inventions that give the manufactured doll her 
house and her toilettes, the benefit of all modern 
appliances, children, as a rule, love and cherish an 
old and battered rag doll; even though the nursery 
is full of modern dolls, the old rag doll misused 
to the point of ruination, is always perfect. 

"To the little girl who owns her. 
Who for short calls her Poll, 
For she loves the queer absurdity, 
Her old rag doll." 

Modern dolls, of which there are now nearly one 
thousand varieties, made their appearance in this 
country about a century ago. They were mostly 
kid covered bodies with artificial heads; the fea- 

199 



THE DOLL BOOK 

tures were painted and the hair was real, but they 
did not come up to the standard of the present day. 

Dolls with wax heads, whose faces must be 
washed in butter, had long stiff bodies and were 
without joints. The heads were apt to melt in 
hot weather, and as the children greased them- 
selves more than they did their dolls' faces, these 
drawbacks soon made them unpopular. 

Then came the beginning of the mechanical doll, 
with eyes that would open and shut, and a body 
that would emit a cry when properly squeezed. 
Edison and electricity perfected the walking and 
talking doll, though the model was constructed in 
the Middle Ages by the great Bishop of Ratisbon. 

Although the stockinette doll has passed from 
the realm of homemade things into that of a home 
industry, still it is possible for any one with a 
talent for imitating things to make one. 

These dolls are really rag dolls with a covering 
of stockinette; the features are quite lifelike in 
coloring and shape. They are made by Mrs. 
Chase, of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and are for 
sale in the big shops of New York and Boston, 
ranging in price from two to five dollars. 

Various people in this country have taken the 
making of rag dolls from the realm of homemade 
articles into that which might be called home 
industry. 

200 




A young Arab of quality and a donkey boy 




M. • 



Spanish toreador, two dolls from the Basque country, and Black 
Virgin of Lyons, France 



HOME-MADE DOLLS 

The Hastings sisters of central New York make 
very fine dolls; they are well shaped and propor- 
tioned, and bear little resemblance in this respect 
to the rag dolls of home manufacture which are 
usually seen. 

The dolls are of all sizes, from the baby in arms 
to the full-grown young woman, and dressed ac- 
cordingly. All sorts of materials are used, so that 
there are few duplicates; the cut of the garments 
varies with the fashions of the day. 

The stockings are made from the best part of 
fine old hosiery, and cut to fit perfectly. Kid 
gloves furnish the materials for slippers and shoes. 
The hats and caps follow a variety of fashions, the 
prevailing one for girls and young children being 
made of light mull shirred over wire, with broad 
strings that tie under the dimple in the chin. 

In the Woman's Exchange of Southern cities, 
one finds the old Southern Mammy (often with a 
white baby in her arms, made with the greatest 
exactness, even to the plaid turban and checked 
apron) and two fascinating cotton pickers, Mammy 
Jinny and Uncle Joe. One is amazed at the 
variety of expressions, and range of age that clever 
fingers can make out of the same material. 

The "double-ender" is made of rags. Two 
bodies are made, one black and one white, just 
the same as you would make any doll, except that 

201 



THE DOLL BOOK 

no legs are put on either one. The two bodies are 
joined at the extremities. Then the two dolls are 
dressed according to the color, the clothing is 
arranged so that there is but one outside skirt, 
which in each case covers the others. For in- 
stance, when the white doll is in evidence, there is 
nothing to indicate that there is any other; a 
simple turn of the wrist throws the reversible dress 
into a new position and lo! a black doll appears. 
Another typical Southern rag doll is an impish 
little pickaninny with tightly braided hair standing 
up like pigtails, who bears on her back a placard 
which reads: 

"Little Topsy, Flipsey, Flopsey, 
' Dress of red, curly head, 
Little apron white and clean, 
Neatest Topsy ever seen." 



202 



CHAPTER XXI 

home-made dolls {continued) 

THERE are many variations of the fruit doll, 
the making of some of which affords no 
end of amusement after dinner while 
discussing the fruit course. 
One easily made is formed of a round, sym- 
metrical apple with four wooden toothpicks or 
matches stuck in at the proper angle to represent 
arms and legs. Raisins make a fairly good rep- 
resentation of feet and blanched almonds with 
fingers cut in shape do admirably for hands. 

A fifth toothpick is used for a neck on which is 
fixed a walnut or a filbert that has been peeled. 
If a walnut is used, it makes a capital face if pared 
with skill so as to leave the protuberances in the 
proper places for the features. Two small black 
currants do duty for eyes and a wee slice of a dried 
cherry will answer for a mouth. A burnt match is 
useful in giving the final touches and a scrap of a 
paper napkin will add grotesqueness to a figure 
that is already amusing. 

203 



THE DOLL BOOK 

Two oranges, one large and one small, are needed 
to make an orange man. Mark the eyes, nose and 
mouth with a penknife on the smaller one; add 
ears by turning out tiny bits of the peel. 

Divide the large orange into halves latitudinally ; 
take all the pulp out of one half and turn up the 
edges a little all around and you will have the hat 
complete. 

Turn the other half of the orange on its flat side 
to form the body or base; cut off a thin slice at 
the top so that the head, from which has been cut 
a similar piece at the lower part, will stand squarely 
on its shoulders. 

A sharp stick thrust through the two holds them 
together; failing this, two wooden toothpicks will 
answer. 

A white scarf about the little man's throat may 
be made from a strip of the lining of the hat or 
from a colored paper napkin. 

Another fruit doll, which is not so perishable, is 
made by using a dry fig for the body and a smaller 
one for the head. Raisins strung on wire hairpins 
make the arms and legs, with one turned up for 
feet and hands in each case. 

Shoe buttons, set above a pinched-up nose, 
serve for eyes, and a thread makes a line for a 
mouth. 

An endless variety of grotesque figures may be 

204 



HOME-MADE DOLLS 

made by using nuts for heads and marking the 
features with pen or pencil. 

Queer old faces may be made of bits of dried 
apple pinched into shape with well-marked fea- 
tures; the shrinkage of the apple leaves lines and 
wrinkles that make the face an aged one. 

The merry-thought doll affords no end of pleas- 
ure and amusement. The wishbones from turkeys, 
chickens, ducks and birds offer various sizes for a 
large family of these dolls. The head may be 
molded of sealing wax, black, white or colored; 
here is a chance to show skill and artistic ability. 
Again a head may be penciled on the flat surface 
of a cork and each end of the wishbone thrust into 
or glued on to the other pieces to give the manikin 
necessary stability, and make it flat-footed enough 
to stand alone unaided. 

Doll penwipers are made from a wishbone and 
dressed like a ballet dancer. They usually wear 
a card around the neck upon which is printed the 
following epitaph: 

"Once I was a wishbone and grew upon a hen, 
Now I am a little slave and made to wipe your pen." 

The uniforms of the various sisters of charity, 
nurses or any character dress make an interesting 
variety. 

Mr. and Mrs. John Cotton are a dear old couple 
made of gray and white cotton batting. The 

205 



THE DOLL BOOK 

bodies, which are made of white, are shaped and 
held in place with a few long stitches. Blue or 
black beads serve as eyes and a bit of fine wire 
bent into shape and placed on the eyes look very 
like spectacles. 

The features are worked in with a few embroi- 
dery stitches. Any sort of costume may be made 
of the gray clothes, and when finished, the two 
quaint figures may rest in armchairs made of 
cardboard. The whim of the moment may add 
any number of articles that seem in keeping with 
the old couple. 

Their granddaughter is made of a sheet of white 
cotton folded to look like a long dress of a baby, 
fastened down the front with bows of narrow red 
ribbon; the arms are joined with a stitch or two; 
shoe buttons or beads are used for eyes and hooks 
and eyes for the remaining features. One of the new, 
long, straight eyes does for a mouth and the old 
round ones for ears. The frill of her cap is bound 
with ribbon and a fringe of real hair shades her fore- 
head. She is sometimes called a hook-and-eye doll. 

The shell work of our grandmother's day is 
being revived in a somewhat different fashion. In 
the early Victorian period it was the fashion for 
visitors at the seashore to gather shells of different 
sizes and fix them with glue on frames and boxes 
and flat surfaces. 

206 



HOME-MADE DOLLS 

An enterprising Irish lady, who saw in a Guern- 
sey cottage a doll dressed in garments of shell 
more than a hundred years old, conceived the idea 
of making modern dolls of shells and succeeded 
so well that she has a large variety of them. 

A little thought and ingenuity will enable any 
one to carry out the idea. First select the doll to 
suit the character desired; you will need some 
strong Brussels net and a glue pot, though some 
of the prepared tubes of glue or paste may do as 
well. 

Cut the garment in the desired shape and glue 
it to the figure of the doll; then fasten the shell on 
in geometrical design or patterns of any sort. Very 
elaborate drapery, arms embroidery and jewels are 
easily made. 

A knight in armor is one of the greatest triumphs, 
as the suit of mail lends itself to the shell imitation. 
A sea urchin will do for any one who needs red hair 
and bits of seaweed might adorn the heads of water 
nymphs. 

To do this work successfully calls for a great 
variety of shells, both as to shape and color, and 
any one undertaking it must make it a business of 
a summer at the seashore to gather the necessary 
material. 

For the string doll, one only needs a ball of 
Dexter's Cotton, No. 8, or even a ball of candle 

207 



THE DOLL BOOK 

wick, a yard and a half of narrow ribbon and two 
shoe buttons. 

Cut a stiff piece of cardboard as high as you wish 
the doll. Over this wind the ball of cotton, not too 
tight, as it must slip off when the doll is partially 
made. When enough is wound to make a fluffy 
skirt, run two strands underneath a portion of it 
at the top of the cardboard to separate it for the 
braids that hang down the back. 

Then cut the strands at the bottom and tie one 
thread tightly around the neck, leaving the sepa- 
rated plaits loose; separately twist these for the 
arms, cut the desired length, and tie on the ribbon 
bracelets. Then arrange and tie the waist line 
and finish with the ribbon sash. Set the shoe 
buttons on for eyes, and mark the other features 
with pen or pencil according to one of the half-tone 
illustrations shown in this book, or as your fancy 
dictates. A darky doll can be made of black cotton. 

A variation of the string doll is made of split 
zephyr of black or white; cut two strands a yard 
in length and double them three times; with needle 
and silk, fashion the loop securely and leave the 
long ends to handle the doll by. Wind silk for the 
neck, and after taking out four strands for arms, 
wind the waist line; separate four strands for legs 
and wind again at ankle; wind the wrists and cut 
fingers and toes the desired length. 

208 



CHAPTER XXII 

home-made dolls (continued) 

DOLLS made of bottles give about the best 
return for the work they cost of any of 
the homemade kind. They are easily 
put into shape. First, take a bottle of 
any size or shape that pleases you, fill it half full 
of shot and fasten a doll's head on the top of it. 
Make arms out of flesh-colored cardboard and 
attach them with glue. Glazed and decorated 
tissue paper will make the most effective garments ; 
silk and wool materials are more substantial, but 
they require more skill in arranging. Artificial jew- 
elry, necklaces, pins and bracelets may be freely 
used to carry out the character. 

These "bottle babies," as they are called, are 
very common in Germany. It is the fashion in 
that country to make gifts of bottles of wine; to 
render them still more welcome, the bottles are 
hidden by attractive decorations, which usually take 
the form of a well dressed woman in character. 
A student with gown and mortar-board cap is 

209 



THE DOLL BOOK 

easily arranged. Any of the European peasant 
costumes may be carried out by following pictures 
in the magazines or costume books. A nurse, a 
Sister of Mercy, a Quaker woman, are brought 
forth with very little ingenuity and skill. 

The heads may be made with cork if preferred, 
with features ingeniously painted; if one is even 
a little talented in this direction, a great and inter- 
esting variety can be made. 

An exhibition of these once seen, showed a bottle 
of Dutch liquor wearing the quaint and curious 
costume and headdress of a Zealand girl. Bottles 
of Malaga and Port masqueraded in the graceful 
Spanish costume with lace mantillas. Various Ital- 
ian wine bottles were flamboyant in the gay cos- 
tumes of the peasant of the Roman Campagna, 
while the voluminous costume of a stately German 
matron deftly concealed a bottle of Rhine wine. 

The straw covers in which wine bottles are packed 
may be used in the same way; they are more easily 
crushed, but still they will not break if let fall. 

All children are familiar with shadow pictures, 
but perhaps they have not all seen the shadow 
doll, or dolls, as there are several varieties of them. 
You will need more dexterity than materials for 
these dolls. 

First close your hand and then paint two eyes, 
and underneath them a nose on the knuckles of 

210 



HOME-MADE DOLLS 

your index and third finger. The thumb pressed 
against the index finger and moved up and down 
will represent a toothless mouth. 

The knuckle of the index finger forms the nose; 
above it are the eyes; by draping the face with a 
large handkerchief you will see the features of an 
old woman. 

After a little practice you will be able to move 
the thumb up and down — as the lower lip and chin 
would move, then you may sing a song in the 
wheezy voice of a toothless old woman, and if you 
are clever, carry on a conversation, as ventriloquists 
do with their puppets. 

This doll may be used as part of an evening's 
entertainment, if the performance is carried on in 
a dim light, or better still, behind a sheet drawn 
across the end of the room. 

Pretty trifles are fashioned by agile fingers from 
bits of crumbs, paper, cardboard and other mere 
nothings. Valuable because they show how deft 
little fingers may become in the useful amusements 
that modern education employs as an introduction 
to manual training. 

In "Child Life in Colonial Days," Alice Morse 
Earle tells of various kinds of flower dolls that \s 
gladdened her youthful days. 

A very effective and bilious old lady, or daisy 
grandmother, was made by clipping off the rays of 

211 



THE DOLL BOOK 

a field daisy to shape the border or ruffle of a cap, 
leaving two long rays for strings, and marking in a 
grotesque old face with pen and ink. 

"A dusky face, called with childish plainness 
of speech, a 'nigger-head,' could be made in like 
fashion from the black-eyed Susan or yellow daisy, 
which now rivals the ox-eye daisy as a pest of New 
England fields. 

"What black-headed puppet or doll could we 
make from the great poppies whose reflexed petals, 
were gay scarlet petticoats, and also from the blos- 
soms of vari-colored double balsams, with their 
frills and flounces. 

"The hollyhock, ever ready to render to the 
child a new pleasure, could be tied into tiny dolls 
with shining satin gowns, true fairies. Families, 
nay, tribes of patriarchal size, had the little garden 
mother. 

"Mertensia, or lung- wort, we termed 'pink and 
blue ladies.' The lovely blossoms, which so de- 
lighted the English naturalist, Wallace, and which 
he called 'drooping porcelain bluebells,' are shaped 
something like a child's straight-waisted, full- 
skirted frock. If pins are stuck upright in a 
piece of wood, the little blue silken frocks can 
be hung over them and the green calyx looks like 
a tiny hat. 

"A thickly growing cluster of pine needles was 

212 



HOME-MADE DOLLS 

called 'a lady.' When her petticoats were care- 
fully trimmed, she could be placed upright on a 
sheet of paper and by softly blowing upon it could 
be made to dance." 

The relation of dolls to child life is of far more 
importance than most people imagine; in fact, it 
is almost limitless. Few people stop to think 
how dolls educate and develop their children. The 
child wants a doll, the mother buys it and thinks no 
more about it. She little dreams how that doll 
will develop in her little girl what might be called 
the craft instinct. How, through the desire to have 
her dolly look well, she learns to sew, and cut out 
and put together the little garments that go to 
make a well-dressed doll. 

Crude enough these first efforts are, to be sure, 
but practice soon makes — if not perfect — at least 
creditable work. The child and her dolls live in 
a world of their own which we "grown ups" can 
never enter, and seldom get a glimpse of, except 
when some ingenuous, confiding little one tells us, 
as did one child, that she had been all her life, try- 
ing not to let her dolly know she was not alive. 

The following story is told of a small girl whose 
generosity and sympathy caused her to lend her 
favorite doll to a playmate who was ill. She was 
overheard extemporizing, after she had finished 
her usual allowance of prayers : "Dear God, please 

213 



THE DOLL BOOK 

make Frances Hall better, for Jesus' sake, for her 
sake, for my sake, Amen." 

And who has not smiled, almost with tears in 
one's eyes, at the picture of the child and her dollies, 
kneeling reverently by the bedside, while the little 
damsel says after various other petitions: "And 
Lord, I pray that You will just pertend this is my 
dollies' talking, 'stead of me." 

What the strange fairy sang to Tom and the 
babies, about her old doll, is as true to-day as it 
was when Kingsley wrote the "Water Babies." 

"I once had a sweet little doll, 

The prettiest doll in the world; 
Her cheeks were so red and so white, dears, 

And her hair was so charmingly curled. 
But I lost my poor little doll, dears; 

As I played in the heath one day; 
And I cried for more than a week, dears, 

But I never could find where she lay. 

I found my poor little doll, dears, 

As I played in the heath one day; 
Folks say she is terribly changed, dears, 

For her paint is all washed away, 
And her arm trodden off by the cows, dears, 

And her hair not the least bit curled, 
But for old sakes' sake she is still, dears, 

The prettiest doll in the world." 

Who has not seen, and taken pleasure in the sight 
of a small child rising to the highest pitch of ecstasy 
at the unexpected gift of a long-coveted doll. 

Other dolls are made out of poppies. In cer- 

214 



HOME-MADE DOLLS 

tain parts of Hungary, little girls spend much of 
their time taking care of large flocks of geese, and 
while thus engaged amuse themselves by making 
dolls out of flowers, sticks and any other handy 
objects. 

One illustration in this book shows how a small 
Magyar girl will make an exceedingly pretty doll of 
a poppy. The whole of the poppy has been utilized 
for the purpose, and when more was needed the 
girl's dress was ruthlessly torn into strips to meet 
the demand. 

The life of all flower dolls is inevitably brief, 
but this matters little as a new doll can be made 
every day and in a very short time. American 
mothers would object to having their children 
tear their dresses for doll clothing, but it would 
be an easy matter to keep a supply of scraps on 
hand for the purpose. 



215 



CHAPTER XXIII 

home-made dolls {continued) 

THERE is an infinite variety of paper dolls 
ranging from the crude shapes cut for 
the amusement of the children half a 
century ago to the Spencer walking doll, 
which marvelous creature is made entirely of 
paper. 

The paper dolls which delighted the children 
who are grandparents now, might have been called 
emergency dolls, for they were as quickly evolved 
upon the childish demand for a new doll as was 
the doll made from spools from the work-basket, 
or the one made of mother's rolling pin wrapped 
round with baby's blanket. 

White paper, or if this was not at hand, a bit of 
newspaper with the white margin for the head, 
would make the body, and from another scrap the 
single garment that often sufficed for a costume 
could be quickly cut. 

Quantities of handsome underclothing, with mo- 
dish coats and hats, were usually supplied when the 
child reached the point of cutting the dolls herself, 

216 



HOME-MADE DOLLS 

and was allowed a few sheets of colored tissue paper 
to give variety to the garments. 

These dolls were so inexpensive and easily made 
that most girls had large families of them ranging 
from baby, who was cradled in the depths of a crim- 
son or yellow hollyhock blossom, to the grandfather 
who represented one's own beloved grandsire. 

If, by chance, the stamped frill of white paper 
that bordered the ugly, stiff, made-up bouquets of 
that period, fell to the lot of a tiny maiden, she 
immediately converted it into embroidery for the 
dresses and petticoats of her many children. 
Failing in this, she made scallops and eyelets in 
fine paper with her scissors as she saw her mother 
do in cloth, and pasted this on her children's 
underwear and was just as happy as if she had had 
the stamped paper. 

Later the children of that period delighted in 
nuns of various orders, some with blue and white 
habits and others with black, so mixed that the 
nuns themselves would never have been able to 
say to which order they belonged. These required 
a little more care and ingenuity in making and 
were the more satisfactory as they never required 
but the one costume. The outline drawings for 
these dolls have been made from some pathetic 
little figures that have lain for half a century quite 
forgotten in an envelope. 

217 



THE DOLL BOOK 

Cut out a stiff piece of white paper in exact 
shape of the pattern given — size may be varied to 
any extent. 

Fold down the center. With black ink paint 
the sleeves, shoes, and a narrow border across the 
bottom — along the side of the habit also. 




Add the rosary and the cross. You will have 
Sister Margaret complete. 

I was surprised to find that a few years ago an 
ingenious Frenchman had utilized the paper Sister 
of Mercy as the envelope for a paper of needles. 
This was a novelty indeed, but it lasted only a 

218 



HOME-MADE DOLLS 

short while, for it added to the cost without in- 
creasing the sale of the needles. 

After these simple paper dolls, which were in- 
expensive and entirely made at home and by 
inexperienced fingers, came the reign of the 
"boughten" paper doll, which still continues to a 
certain extent. 

A doll with its entire wardrobe was printed on a 
large sheet of paper, and several of these were sold 
singly or in boxes containing half a dozen. It 
needed only a pair of sharp scissors to free the doll 
and her wardrobe from the superfluous paper and 
a bit of paste to add feathers and connect several 
joints, and the "boughten" doll was a thing of 
beauty and a joy as long as she was tenderly cared 
for. 

The fashion pages of Godey's Ladies 9 Book 
furnished many a girl with paper dolls that were 
the solace of her childhood. At first, of course, 
these papers were too precious to give to the little 
ones, for they were used over and over again, be- 
cause in those days fashions did not change with 
the lightning-like rapidity of to-day. 

But when the child did get them, how carefully 
she cut the figures out, named and marked them 
and treasured them! 

The Columbian dolls, made by Miss Marietta 
Adams, of Oswego, New York, are most artistic 

219 



THE DOLL BOOK 

home creations. They are made in several sizes 
from one foot and a half to three feet. 

They are made of rag, that is to say, they are 
called rag dolls, although the bodies are made of 
the finest sateen and their features are painted in 
oil by experts; their faces, hands and feet can be 
easily washed and they will last for years. These 
dolls are mentioned to show how small a beginning 
many a home industry had, and to encourage any 
one who has taste and talent in this direction. 

Vegetables have been made in faint imitations 
of dolls; the broom-stick, potato masher, rolling- 
pin, umbrella, pebbles, pieces of wood, glass, clay, 
bottles, rags, putty, wax and dozens of other 
familiar articles and materials have been made to 
do duty as humanity in miniature. 

A pillow rolled up hard and smooth with mother's 
apron tied round, often makes as satisfactory a 
doll as any other. And many a homely one is 
better loved and tended than the more expensive 
ones that seem to have little or no individuality 
about them, as witness the following from a child 
who had been insulted by her brother, who called 
her doll a bed-post. 



"You needn't have called her a bed-post 
Sawn off grandmother's bed, 
That little knot it stands on 
Makes the loveliest head. 

220 




So i 

4> r£ 



HOME-MADE DOLLS 

Go on then and call her a wood stick, 
I suppose you must if you must, 

But I shall call you a mountain, 
Because you were made out of dust. 

The more a doll makes a child use its imagi- 
nation, the better for the child. To be obliged 
to contrive to make her doll herself and then its 
clothes, and to learn how to put them on and take 
them off, is the best thing that can happen to a 
child. 

The children of to-day are supplied with me- 
chanical dolls and toys, until there is no room for 
them to use their imagination. 

It is no great wonder that even the smallest chil- 
dren weary of their playthings, and are constantly 
going to nurse or mother, saying: "What can I do 
now?" 

Like Alexander, the little ones want more worlds 
to conquer, but loving parents and a mechanical age 
have left little for them to discover or to conquer. 

Give the children raw materials, rags, cotton, 
glue, paints, pencils, nuts, fruits, anything that is 
at hand, and let them work out their own salvation. 

Besides being a source of amusement and en- 
tertainment, mothers and teachers will soon find 
that the children are giving themselves a liberal 
education. They will learn to sew, to combine 
colors, to study effect, to understand proportion; 

221 



THE DOLL BOOK 

they will become courteous and polite, even while 
making and playing with homemade dolls. 

When they are older and have dolls from foreign 
countries, they will get a better understanding of 
geography; history will become real; they will learn 
foreign coinage by sending their dolls abroad, as 
well as the customs of different countries. 

Costumes will take on a value that fashion never 
possessed. The legends and folklore that are con- 
nected with the inhabitants of dolldom the world 
over will become familiar, and thus will be laid the 
foundation of an excellent education. 



222 



CHAPTER XXIV 

home-made dolls (continued) 

FROM time immemorial, at least from the 
landing of the Pilgrims, who found Indian 
corn growing wild, the succulent vegetable 
has furnished a variety of materials for the 
home manufacture of dolls. 

The dry cob makes a firm substantial body and 
head, which the Indians of to-day dress in buck- 
skin, beads and feathers like their own chiefs, also 
a most delightful baby doll swathed about like the 
babies of Southern Europe. 

The corn-husk dolls are more difficult to achieve. 
Occasional specimens were to be found, but it was 
not until Miss Nellie Morrison, of Salina, Kansas, 
sent a full-grown doll to a corn festival a few years 
ago, that Miss Maizie was seen in perfection. 

The doll and every article of her fashionable 
attire is made from the product of a stalk of corn. 
The hair is made of a bunch of fine tassel dried at 
the proper time; the trimming of the modish hat 
is a cluster of lovely corn blossoms. 

223 



THE DOLL BOOK 

The body is a dried cob, covered with husk, 
upon which features are painted with considerable 
fidelity. The gown, mantle, and parasol are 
cleverly manufactured from smooth husks, which 
are susceptible of being folded and sewn into any 
desired shape, if they are kept a little moist; when 
too dry they become brittle and less manageable. 

You must begin to gather material for Miss 
Maizie months before you wish to make the doll, 
so as to be sure of getting tassels and blossoms at 
the right season. You need to exercise judgment 
in the selection of nice smooth husks as well; it is 
wise to save a quantity of each that you may have 
more choice when you come to make up your 
material. 

For many years the demure Quaker lady in 
gown of gray and white kerchief, who often served 
as a pin cushion, was the only representative of 
the hickory nut family. 

A few years ago Mrs. A. H. Blym of Syracuse, 
New York, according to a newspaper story, 
evolved a new type of hickory nut people. They 
are weird and peculiar folk, but so comically like 
the person or type they represent that one is irre- 
sistibly moved to laughter. 

Mrs. Blym soon found that there were infinite 
possibilities in the construction of these funny 
folk, but Uncle Sam, John Bull, Bismarck, George 

224 



HOME-MADE DOLLS 

Washington, Queen Victoria, Napoleon, the vari- 
ous Presidents, Li Hung Chang, Susan B. Anthony, 
Joe Jefferson as Rip Van Winkle, and the favorite 
subjects of the cartoonists were the most popular 
and most quickly recognized. 

Like many another good thing, the first one was 
an accident. Having a hickory nut in her hand one 
day, Mrs. Blym was struck by its peculiar resem- 
blance to the rugged face of an old man. 

Like a flash she fitted a body to it, pinned on 
some old clothes, clapped a slouch hat on the head 
and put a corncob pipe in his mouth, a fishing 
rod in his hand, and there he was, as complete an 
old fisherman as ever drew a cod from Gloucester 
Bay. 

The old fisherman was so popular that other 
subjects presented themselves. Success was as- 
sured when they became popular as dinner favors. 
Having an uncommon degree of inventive faculty, 
hickory-nut people multiplied themselves almost 
indefinitely. 

To make these funny folks, one must have a 
choice of nuts, for the success of the doll depends 
upon the expression of the nut itself. When once 
you begin to look them over, you will be surprised 
to discover how the nut, unaided by pen or brush, 
resembles a human face. 

Having decided upon the character you wish to 

225 



THE DOLL BOOK 

represent and selected your head, you then proceed 
to paint the features as true to life as possible. In 
addition to the nuts you will need pens, paint, a 
tube of paste, a block of India ink, a roll of wire, 
rags for stuffing the bodies and scraps of all sorts 
for costumes. 

If you have any ability in the way of carving, 
you can have further variety and more satisfac- 
tory results by helping the natural expression of 
the nut, by carving the face and head. 

The bodies must be made with strips of wire 
introduced so that they may be adjusted to any 
desired position. Bonnet-wire wrapped around 
with strips of cotton, make proper arms and legs. 
In arranging the costumes, care must be taken to 
have them as correct as possible that the resem- 
blance may be quick to strike the eye. 

The peanut people are another tribe belonging 
to the nut family. John Chinaman, showing his 
various occupations in this country, seems to be 
the favorite form. 

A bag of peanuts, a bit of wire, rags and some 
scraps of white and blue cloth, with a few acorn 
cups, are all the materials needed for several 
specimens. 

Select the peanuts with care (a bit of experience 
will show you better than any amount of direc- 
tions), rather a round full one for the head; 

226 




s 

M 
§• 



HOME-MADE DOLLS 

paint the slanting eyes, high cheek bones and 
mouth of a Chinese, taking a picture for a model 
if you like and attach a long plait of black linen 
thread for a queue. 

Make the body of rolled rags with pieces of wire 
in the arms and legs to make them somewhat 
flexible, or use peanuts threaded on wire. Select 
bent double peanuts for the feet and straight ones 
for the hands. An acorn cup glued to the head 
resembles fairly well the inverted wash-bowl hats 
worn by the coolies. 

If you wish to create a vegetable vender, fasten 
the half of a peanut to each end of a short rod or 
toothpick and hang across the little man's shoul- 
ders. Our laundryman will probably wear the 
trousers of civilization, but you will find from a 
little observation that he still has enough of the 
"heathen Chinee" about him to be picturesque. 

Sometimes these odd little figures are set on pen- 
wipers or are arranged with toy buckets for matches. 
Indeed there are many ways in which they may 
be utilized as birthday or holiday gifts, as well as 
furnishing employment for restless little fingers. 

A Miss Fortune is made of a frame of hairpins, 
the two feet stuck into a piece of smooth cork to 
make them stand upright. The face is rather flat, 
just another piece of smooth cork, with features 
marked with brush or pen. 

227 



THE DOLL BOOK 

A black silk skirt and three-cornered silk shawl 
with a close bonnet to match completes her cos- 
tume; a tiny roll of paper is thrust into the folds 
of her shawl; this is supposed to be the talisman 
by which she tells your fortunes. 

Changes of costumes and size will make a great 
variety of these unusual creatures. 

An empty spool, three or four Japanese paper 
napkins and a clay pipe will, when properly ar- 
ranged, make Miss Piper. 

Lay two napkins together, cut a circle in the 
center large enough to put the pipestem through 
and fasten neck to the bowl, tying tightly with a 
string. 

Put the mouthpiece of the pipe into a spool that 
the doll may stand securely. With a brush or 
pencil mark a face on the bowl of the pipe. 

Fold another napkin three-corner-wise and lay 
it over the doll's head to form a sort of hood and 
shawl, fastening around the neck with a ribbon 
bow and ends. 

Curious Chinese dolls with pigtails are made of 
an empty egg shell, or a hard-boiled egg, 

Mark the slanting eyes and other features with 
a pen; make a stiff, round black hat of crinoline 
and silk with red tassel and button in the center 
of the crown. 

A bit of paste will be needed to hold this in 

228 



HOME-MADE DOLLS 

place. When completed, set in the midst of 
frilled paper. 

A Humpty Dumpty and many other shapes will 
be evolved from this. Frilled paper will make an 
old woman's face, and a strip of cloth fastened at 
the chin is costume enough. 



229 



CHAPTER XXV 

THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF THE DOLL 

G STANLEY HALL and A. Cassowell 
Ellis, both of Clark University, Massa- 
chusetts, published, a few years ago in 
the Pedagogical Seminary, the results of 
a curious research which they had made in what 
they call a psychogenetic field. Although their 
work is in the main somewhat apart from the 
object of this book, still one could not be interested 
in dolls from any point of view without finding in 
their pamphlet, "A Study of Dolls," much food 
for reflection. 

In the interest of psychology and pedagogy, Mr. 
Hall and Mr. Ellis had printed and circulated 
among eight hundred teachers and parents, a list 
of questions, the answers to which were to furnish 
certain data with regard to juvenile feelings, acts 
and thoughts toward any object which represented 
a baby or a child. 

The questions asked were: First, with regard to 
the kind of doll, of what material it was made, etc., 

230 



EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF THE DOLL 

etc. Second, the feeding of dolls, what kind of 
food and how given. Third, medicine and dis- 
eases were treated, what remedies were given and 
how. 

The fourth question asked what constituted the 
death of a doll, funeral services and burial. The 
next one asked for details of psychic acts and 
qualities ascribed to dolls. Then information was 
wanted with regard to dolls' names, also with 
regard to accessories, toilet articles, furnishings, 
etc., etc. 

What did children think about doll families; 
doll discipline, hygiene, and regimen, rewards and 
punishments ; how dolls are put to sleep. 

What is the influence of dolls upon children? 
Can taste in dress, tidiness and thoroughness in 
making their clothes or other moral qualities be 
cultivated? How does the material of which the 
doll is made and the degree of lifelike perfection 
react on the child? 

Is there regularity and persistency in the care of 
dolls? Is imagination best stimulated by rude 
dolls which can be more freely and roughly used? 
Are children better morally, religiously and socially, 
or better prepared for parenthood and domestic life 
by them? How can the educational value of dolls 
be better brought out? 

From the mass of correspondence that ensued, 

231 



THE DOLL BOOK 

Mr. Hall selected and published forty or more 
pages of very interesting reading. Many of the 
statements must be taken with a grain of salt, for 
the childish mind cannot, with logic and reason, 
define its impulses, whims and vagrant actions; 
while the reminiscences of adults are too often 
colored by later impressions or dimmed by the 
lapse of time. 

However, Mr. Hall's digests, conclusions and 
suggestions are of interest and value. He finds 
that dolls are made of almost every conceivable 
material; also that mud dolls are sometimes sick 
at first, but when dry are well; that a shawl doll 
had no heart, therefore a ball was put in its folds 
so it could live and love ; that colored dolls needed 
no clothing because they were "so black nobody 
could see." 

He also found that the rudest doll has a great 
advantage of stimulating the imagination by giving 
it more to do, than does the elaborately finished 
doll. That interest in school books has an im- 
portant influence on the doll passion, often elim- 
inating it; that only one-twelfth of the dolls made 
are boy dolls; that nearly all doll play involves 
the assumption of psychic qualities. 

Mr. Hall's returns show that dolls have many 
diseases and that the common remedies are the 
household remedies used by mother. He discovers 

232 



EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF THE DOLL 

that the doll passion seems to be strongest between 
the years of seven and ten, and to reach the climax 
between eight and nine, etc., etc. 

The study of life and human kind is the absorb- 
ing interest of the educational thought of to-day. 
Every available method of teaching the child how 
to acquire the greatest amount of information in 
the easiest manner and in the shortest possible time 
is used, the object lesson being the most familiar 
and perhaps the most effective. 

What topic yet proposed for the education of the 
young is not in part at least illustrated by doll study? 
A knowledge of history, geography, folklore, tradi- 
tion of peoples, their poetry, music, sentiments, 
dances, social religious festivals are essential "to 
the education of broad minded individuals." How 
better can these things be taught to children than 
to make object lessons of the manikins that repre- 
sent types and classes of various countries? 

Dolls have a social and religious significance; 
fundamental principles, which underlie folklore 
and traditions, are embodied and set forth by dolls, 
which the majority of people look upon simply as 
children's toys. The folk games and festivals are 
used with most happy effect in settlement work, 
making a tangible bond between the old and the 
new. 

It is a mistake, as some writer has said, to sweep 

233 



THE DOLL BOOK 

aside all the old values of life in favor of modern 
virtues, as Americans are prone to do. 

Dolls are a never ending source of interest to 
children. Put a collection from foreign countries 
before them, each one representing a type, an oc- 
cupation, a craft; then would geography be as 
pictorial as Mother Goose Melodies. The doll 
becomes a recognized type, a concrete representa- 
tion of a country and its people; under these con- 
ditions the children will soon acquire a mass of 
information not set down in the text books. 

By means of dolls we "animate the dead figures 
of history"; its study will no longer mean commit- 
ting to memory the dates of certain battles and how 
many were killed at the time. The dolls give an 
historic background and preserve for us the beau- 
ties of a life that is passed and gone. 

Few children there are who do not love their dolls ; 
these passive and unresponsive creatures are by 
the imagination of the child endowed with life and 
love. The child who does not love dolls has little 
or no imagination and will pass through life miss- 
ing pleasures and delights on every side. With 
children of this sort dolls are never "real" ; and one 
questions whether they are possessed of the noblest 
and best of all human attributes, the mother instinct. 
Such a child would never say to her mother, as did 
an indignant little girl: "Mamma, Mamma, you 

234 



EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF THE DOLL 

are sitting on my dollie. What are you thinking 
about? I don't sit on your children." 

No child loves the doll that is bought already 
dressed half so well as she does the one she has 
made or looked on while mother or grandmother 
made it for her. The doll that is imposed upon 
the affections is never able to fill the heart of the 
child to the same extent as the far more inferior 
one, which she has helped to create and that has 
been her very own from its birth. 

A writer in the Craftsman says: "The relation 
of dolls to child life is of far more importance than 
most people imagine; in fact it is almost limitless. 
Few people stop to think how dolls educate and de- 
velop their children. The child wants a doll, the 
mother buys it and thinks no more about it. She 
little dreams of how that doll will develop in her 
little girl what might be called the "craft instinct." 
How, through the desire to have her dolly look well, 
she learns to sew, to cut out and put together, the 
little garments that go to make a well dressed doll. 

Who has not seen, and taken pleasure in seeing, 
a small child rise to the highest pitch of ecstacy at 
the unexpected gift of a long coveted doll? 

Concerning this point of view Professor Hall, in 
that admirable paper just alluded to, says: "The 
educational value of dolls is enormous, and the pro- 
test of this paper is against longer neglect of it. It 

235 



THE DOLL BOOK 

educates the heart and will, even more than the 
intellect and to learn how to control and apply it 
will be to discover a new instrument in education 
of the very highest potency. Every parent and 
every teacher who can deal with individuals at 
all, should study the doll habits of each child, now 
discouraging and repressing, now stimulating by 
hint and suggestion. 

"There should be somewhere a doll museum, 
a doll expert to keep the possibilities of this great 
educative instinct steadily in view, and careful ob- 
servation upon children of kindergarten, primary 
and grammar grades should be instituted as at an 
experiment station in order to determine just what 
is practicable. 

"Children with French dolls incline to practice 
their French upon them. Can this tendency be 
utilized in teaching a foreign language? 

"To make dolls represent heroes in history and 
fiction, to have collections illustrating costumes of 
different countries, the Eskimo hut, the Indian 
tepee, the cowboy's log cabin, to take them on im- 
aginary journeys with foreign money, is not merely 
to keep children young, cheerful and out of bad 
company, but it is to teach geography, history, 
morals, nature, etc., in the most objective way. 

"Plenty of animals, figures representing different 
vocations and trades, poor and rich, etc., would not 

236 



EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF THE DOLL 

only be taking the dolls to kindergarten and school, 
but would bring rudimentary sociology, ethics and 
science, in their most needed and effective form 
there, too. Dolls are a good school for children; 
here they can practice all they know. 

"Children are at a certain period interested to 
know what is inside of things, especially dolls ; could 
not manikin dolls be made that were dissectible 
enough to teach some anatomy? Would not dolls 
and their furnishings be among the best things to 
make in manual training schools, and why are dolls 
which represent the most original, free and spon- 
taneous expression of the play instinct so com- 
monly excluded from kindergarten, where they 
could aid in teaching almost anything?" 

A collection of dolls is not only unique, but pos- 
sesses a marked pyschological and physiological 
educational value. 

The child's interest is at once aroused so that 
the impressional mentality is in a most receptive 
condition, and the doll becomes, or may be made 
of great value as a type of the development of the 
human race. 

In this utilitarian age of ours, it is well to foster 
ideality, and whatever of culture along the lines of 
developing the finer nature of children we may 
possess should be treasured. It is doubtful if any 
one could listen to an exposition of various types 

237 



THE DOLL BOOK 

of dolls and not desire to revert to those days 
when doll-play aroused and stimulated the gentle 
and better instincts of one's nature. 

These types of the children or people of other 
lands have a great educational value. A boy or 
girl may read and even memorize the distinctive 
costumes and features of other peoples, but that is 
as nothing compared to the visual delight which a 
collection gives. The artistic sense is quickened 
by the vivid colorings and adornments of these 
types of foreign children. The discriminating 
power is stimulated as we contrast the different 
styles, so that a better taste and knowledge of tex- 
tile fabrics becomes part of the lessons inculcated 
by the array of mankind. 



238 



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